Absolution
by GreenWood Elf
Summary: Mortally wounded, Gabriel finds himself alone in the Mojave Desert. And in his hour of need, he learns, as his brother Michael before him, that the kindness of humans has not yet been exhausted.
1. Chapter One Mea Culpa

**Author's Note: **I have to admit, I am a sucker for horror movies. And despite being totally over-the-top and ridiculously corny, I really loved Legion. Needless to say, I was particularly inspired by the strained, brotherly relationship between the two Archangels. This fic is my attempt to explore their bond more fully. I do hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Absolution**

**Chapter One Mea Culpa**

Gabriel heard the click of the gun, the chamber coming up empty. It was a ghost of sound, the echo of false hope and bitter, bitter disappointment.

"You were going to kill him, weren't you?" a voice near at hand whispered. There was something of cautious awe in the tone, which in and of itself was cracking and faint. A boy's voice, he thought. A boy just cresting the ridge into manhood.

"Shut up, Jack." The second speaker was female. Her breath washed over Gabriel in a cloud of scents. Old coffee. Chewing gum. Maybe blood.

He stiffened, feeling his eyes roll behind closed lids. An ache extended down to his limp hands and he wanted only to take up his mace and smash it through the skulls of these people, these _humans_.

God damn them all…

A wry thought pushed through the haze of his anger, bringing regret, metallic and raw, to the back of his throat. Yes, God _had_ damned them all. That's why he was here now, lying prostrate and bleeding on some harsh, unforgiving little spit of land on a polluted planet. Tormented by foul smelling, babbling humans. Humans that he would have killed…had he the strength.

Gabriel kept his eyes closed, too indifferent to open them and get a good look at the faces that belonged to the voices. He had thought he was safe, huddled in the bed of a dried gully, his back, his great, razor wings tucked against the space between two boulders. Safe and sound, like a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes. Safe and sound, so he could die from the wounds inflicted by his own brother.

_Michael._

The first injury, the neat hole in his shoulder, was his fault. A bit of rare overzealousness. He remembered Michael grappling at his back, his tattooed arms twisting over his throat, crushing the breath out of his windpipe. Gabriel had done what only he could do. Had traded one pain for another. Had taken his mace and driven it through his own shoulder…and through Michael.

That wound was certainly his fault, for he fully knew the dangers of a weapon forged in Heaven. A weapon forged not in fire, but the purest of light. Light transformed into matter. Light transformed into steel. The epitome of holy wrath and vengeance. His mace was made from the only steel that could harm an Archangel, as was Michael's sword.

The same sword that had driven Lucifer from Paradise.

The same sword that had sliced across his gut not three hours ago.

That wound, yes, that wound had been Michael's fault.

But because his brother was merciful, he had left Gabriel to suffer from his injuries instead of finishing him off. The irony itself was wicked. Deadly.

Blood still ran down his side now, the blood of the Nile, the blood of the babes slaughtered by King Herod, the blood of the martyrs and the saints.

And he was, in this moment, in this fleeting, unrecognized time of space, completely powerless. The strength had been drained from his arms, the reason from his mind. His wings had trembled pitifully when he tried to master the currents of air, when he tried to ascend only to dive back to earth.

Gabriel had fallen, fallen from flight and into this wretched gully. The dust of it caked his lacerated stomach, soiled the fine metal of his armor with dullness and matted his hair. It was in such a state, in such a lonely, reviled state, that the humans had found him.

And one of them had put a gun to his head.

Gabriel knew this, even though he had his eyes closed. His ears echoed with the click of the chamber, and somewhere, in the back of his mind, his pride was mollified to know that a bullet couldn't pierce his skull.

Which also meant that there would be no easy end to his suffering.

The voices rose up against him now, inane in their rambling, spewing coarse and useless words. He heard the woman speak. Her tone was tight and angry.

"It's not human," she said. "Jack, don't touch it!"

"He has wings." This from the boy. The boy who sounded alight with wonderment. With awe. "Max, he has wings."

"I said get away from it!" A scuffle ensued. More dust kicked up, causing Gabriel's nostrils to dilate ever so slightly.

The boy called Jack seemed upset. He started wheezing. "You were going to kill him."

"No, it's dead already."

"But look, his chest is moving. I think he's hurt. Do you see the blood around his stomach?"

The woman's voice reached Gabriel from across the gully. "There's blood everywhere," Max said. "Good. Let it die."

Although her words were spoken with force, Gabriel didn't know if he believed them. There was a slight waver in her pitch, an unreliable vibrato.

Plastic slid against leather and Gabriel guessed that she had holstered her gun.

"Let's go."

"Wait, Max. Wait!" Jack had drawn closer, too close, evidently, for Gabriel heard him being yanked back again by a rough hand. "I don't want to leave him!"

"Fuck." The word was muttered, an expression of worry, not anger. "Jack, you can't start doing this-"

"Please. We'll take him back to Gram's house." The boy was leaning over him, his scent reminiscent of sweat and fear and clothes that had been washed with too much bleach. "He can stay in the garage if you don't want him inside."

"Are you crazy?" Max was adamant. "Are you…are you….Jack, he's at least two hundred pounds, probably more. You want me to carry him home?"

"I could run back and get the car."

"No!" This time, she did succeed in yanking him back. The boy whimpered, a noise of protest, not fear.

Gabriel knew the difference.

"I didn't get you out of L.A. to have you run off." Urgency had replaced the cynicism in Max's voice. "We're not separating. You saw…you saw what happened to those people…in the streets, Jack. You saw them!"

Gabriel was surprised when the boy sobbed. "Max."

"I know. I know." This was whispered, an awkward lullaby meant to soothe. "It's just you and me, bud, understand?"

"Until my Mom and Dad get here, you mean?"

"Yeah, yeah." Again, the waver, the uncertainty.

Gabriel recognized it. The boy did not.

"Can't we just, you know, bring him some water? Something?" Jack said, his words still tinged with hope. The hopeless sort of hope that Gabriel had seen so many times before in humans.

The hope that existed in the young man who had stood against him on the mountaintop. Who had stood between him and the child…

"Leave it," Max replied. They were out of the gully now, making their way along some desert track. "Forgot about it, Jack."

Gabriel listened as their footsteps crunched over the hardened ground.

"Max?"

"Huh?"

"What…what do you think he-"

But the woman cut him off, her disparagement drowning out the last of Jack's youthful awe. His unsullied and perfect bewilderment

"It's nothing," Max said with all the blind decisiveness of an adult. "Nothing."

And then they were gone. And then Gabriel was alone.

* * *

He wondered if he slept. Or perhaps the blood loss had pushed him off some vast cliff into oblivion, blurring the precious little he was aware of until he could not remember where he was.

Gabriel forced his eyes opened and saw the sky above him. The stars were out. Despite all that had happened, the stars of God still shined. Arrogant in their ferocity. Keen as the light on the newly sharpened blade…

Michael's blade.

Gabriel could still feel its keen edge as it whipped across his stomach, but the regret had been worse the pain. It always was. His brother turned against him. His brother with the hard face and the compassionate eyes.

Was it betrayal? Had Michael been the traitor?

_Remember_, a small voice told him. _You raised your hand against him first. Remember that. _

Gabriel tried to shake his head, but was forced to let it loll uselessly on his shoulders.

He was weaker now. Unable to draw his breath fully. Unable to move. Unable to wipe the droplets of sweat that inched down his brow. He would die in this little gully, his soul swift returning to Heaven to be renewed. Or Michael would come and heal him.

Michael would come. Michael would come.

And even then, Gabriel knew he was lying to himself.

The wind had picked up and the night was cold. He felt the whisper of the world on the bare skin of his arms. Felt the pain in his stomach, fatally dulled with exhaustion.

Gabriel tried one last time to spread his wings, tried one last time to-

The sound of footsteps. Quick. Nervous. Someone jumping down into the gully.

A boy stumbled across the uneven ground before him, the light from his flashlight finding Gabriel's face in the darkness.

"Hey!" Jack breathed, his cheeks flushed with the chill, his eyes bright and eager and hopeful. "I came back."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I would absolutely love to hear from you. The next chapter will be posted soon.


	2. Chapter Two Red Cross

**Author's Note: **Welcome to chapter two. I'd just like to thank **XSilverLiningsX** and** Boundless Hearts** for reviewing along with everyone who read the last chapter. You guys rock!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Two Red Cross**

Gabriel blinked when the light hit his eyes, earning a sharp gasp from Jack.

"Uh," the boy made an indistinct noise in the back of his throat. "I didn't think…I didn't think you'd be awake." Carefully, he lifted a knapsack off his shoulder and placed it on the ground. "Actually, I thought you'd be dead."

Gabriel watched Jack, not entirely wary, but impressed by the child's courage. Despite having lived for millennia, having seen the blackest reaches of man's depravity and the stunning, golden heights of his triumphs, he still found himself surprised by human nature. It was an indefinable thing. Fluid. Ever-changing. And even he, who knew something of the inner heart, who knew of the workings of the soul and the mind, would not have guessed this boy to be so brave. This wretched little human child.

And Jack was indeed little. Scrawny, really. Although Gabriel had a hard time judging human age, he guessed the boy to be only a few years over his first decade. Young and foolish.

Or young and headstrong, he told himself,\. Gabriel remembered how insistent Jack's female friend had been about him avoiding the wounded angel. Insistent to the point of violence, almost.

Gabriel wondered where the miserable woman was now. She could not have possibly left the boy. For despite her threats, despite her rage and utter ugliness of tone, there had been some sense of love in her words when she spoke to Jack. Love and overwhelming concern.

She might die for this child, he realized. She might die for this little creature.

Not so long ago, he thought Michael might do the same for him, but now the mere thought made grief snatch at his heart.

Gabriel lowered his eyes and forced himself to concentrate on the physical pain instead. It was easier to pin down. Easier to endure. Something that could be understood and controlled, unlike the roiling torment that tore at his spirit every time he thought of his brother's betrayal.

Jack, of course, was oblivious to Gabriel's aimless ruminations. He crouched by his knapsack, pushing back the sleeves of his blue parka, his arms pale and skinny like chicken bones.

"Sorry it has to be like this," he said in a high, fast voice. A voice fueled by excitement and more than a little abject terror. "I wanted to take you back to my Gram's house, or what used to be my Gram's house. She's dead now. But Max could've found a place for you to stay, if she really wanted to." He grunted the last words. "Technically, I'm not supposed to be out here, but…you know." The boy shrugged and unzipped his bag, pulling out a white plastic case with a red cross on it.

Gabriel's eyes widened in recognition. The red cross. Oh, how many times he had seen it before. On the shields of the knights who falsely went to war in God's name. On a small pin worn by a nurse named Clara Barton during the Spanish-American War. On similar bags and cases carried by ambulances to car crashes, where young life was needlessly cut short and children lay with their broken faces pressed against deployed airbags.

Jack struggled with the clasp on the case, his hands trembling. "It's cold out here," he whispered, his breath appropriately cloudy. "You must be freezing, you don't have a jacket."

His eyes trailed to angel's bare arms and Gabriel was surprised to find abundant sympathy lurking just below the surface. Michael himself had reflected such sympathy, had radiated with it. Sympathy was the reason why his brother had fought so hard for humanity. Fought and died.

_Fought and died. _

He thought of Michael then, and wondered if he was watching over them, a guardian to both human and celestial being on this forsaken night. Would he be pleased to see his brother tended to? Would he even care at all?

That last thought, that last, dreadful insinuation was unnecessary and Gabriel knew it. He shut his eyes in shame, earning another small gasp from Jack.

"Hey! Hey, are you okay?"

For the first time, Gabriel thought of speaking to the boy. But then he realized he had nothing to say. Absolutely nothing worth the breath needed to push the words passed his lips.

Instead, he watched as Jack searched through his case, pulling out gauze and a box of band aids and some white medical tape.

"I think this is it," he said at last, lifting a packet of sutures out into the direct beam of the flashlight. "Yeah, this is definitely it." The fear had returned to his voice again. And the fear was a child's.

For some reason, Gabriel thought of the infant that he had been sent to kill and something of sadness welled up within him.

Poor, innocent children. Children meant to be cradled lovingly in an angel's arms, not murdered.

Once more, he focused on the pain.

Jack sniffed, rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his parka and looked up at the sky.

Gabriel was tempted to follow his gaze, but was feeling somewhat disinclined to appreciate the glory of the heavens at the moment. Instead, he stared at the low, stunted shrubs that lined the gully, noticing how the wind pulled faintly at their branches.

Jack was clearly hesitating now, sitting back on his heels and offering the Archangel a deep frown.

"It looks like you're hurt pretty bad," he said, lifting up the flashlight and directing its beam at Gabriel's torso. "Is it your stomach? I see some blood, but it's all dried up. Your armor…or whatever it is, makes it difficult to tell. I guess I could-"

Jack bit his lip, tucking the flashlight under his arm. "Okay, I'm gonna have a look, but I have to take your armor off first. Please don't…just don't move or anything."

He inched forward, hands outstretched, the knuckles looking like tiny marbles under white flesh. Gabriel wondered if he had the strength to grab the boy's wrists and capture them in his unforgiving grip.

But that would be cruel. Cruel and unnecessary. And for all Gabriel's dedication to duty, for all his practiced stoicism honed by the ages, for all his indifference to the fate of mankind, he did not want to hurt this child. There was no need, no reason for him to grab the thin wrists and snap them like brittle twigs. No need to cause fear and pain. He had not been ordered to harm this boy, this shivering and pathetic little creature. Though, in truth, Gabriel did not know what his orders stood for anymore, when blind obedience was disregarded in favor of betrayal.

A hard, uncomfortable lump worked its way into his throat and Gabriel burned with regret. Regret and unspent sorrow. And as Jack's hands drew closer, he kept still, giving way to apathy, as deadly as any sin, as fatal as the wound to his stomach.

Jack glanced at the angel's face once before he touched him, as if assuring himself that he and this strange being had an unspoken agreement.

"Don't move," the boy whispered, "please don't move."

His fingers found one of the buckles holding Gabriel's breastplate to his pauldrons. After a moment of fumbling, he released the first buckle and then the second, pulling the heavy breastplate away with a grunt.

"Ugh," Jack emitted a faint moan of disgust as Gabriel's bloodied torso came into full view.

The Archangel braced himself as the cold air, borne by a stiff wind, hit the ragged flesh around the wound. Out of pure instinct, he clenched his jaw.

Jack noticed the movement. "Did that hurt?" he asked. "I'm sorry. I'm tried to be careful."

Gabriel struggled to remain still, his vision blurring. Fresh blood welled up against his under-tunic, making the light fabric stick to his flesh. The wound was only half-exposed, with the jagged edges of his torn garment concealing the full length of it.

Jack made a gagging sound. "I have to…I have to lift up your shirt. Hold on." He stuck the flashlight between his teeth, his jaw extending grotesquely. "No moving please," he mumbled against it.

Gabriel steeled himself as the boy's fingers peeled back the fabric. Again, the wound smarted as the cold air hit it, the hot blood emitting a faint trail of steam.

"All right." Jack seemed decisive now. He pulled the flashlight out of his mouth and balanced it on the ground so that the beam hit the long gash. "I'm not gonna lie, I've never done anything like this before. But it's just sewing, right? Maybe I should've joined the Boy Scouts, huh? Maybe I should have-"

But he fell silent when he opened the pack of sutures, the needle and black thread spilling out in a sinister tangle onto his lap.

* * *

The boy tried hard. The boy tried so very hard. Gabriel knew the sewing was uneven, he could feel the large gaps between the stitches, could feel Jack's tiny fingers quivering as he drove the needle through the skin and pulled it out the other side.

For a good while, the child was silent, the only sign of his disgust coming when he turned away to retch.

"They make this look easier on _House_," he said after a time, wiping his crimson stained fingers on his jeans. "It's not neat or anything, but I'll put some antiseptic on it and some gauze. I wish that Max was here, she'd be able to do this. She's a cop, you know. I don't know if they teach this sort of stuff at the police academy, but she can do CPR."

By now, Gabriel's head was resting on one of his wings, his eyes feeling heavy. The stitches Jack had put into his stomach would not effectively stop the bleeding and he knew it wouldn't be long now before his soul escaped his body, returning to Heaven to be restored as Michael's had after their fight in the diner.

But Jack had tried. He had snuck away in the middle of the night, spending a good hour in the frigid night air, where the wind tunneled down through the gully and howled and where an Archangel lay bleeding into the dirt.

As the boy reached for the gauze, Gabriel forced his head upright once more, his eyes suddenly clearing.

"Thank you," he said.

Jack dropped the gauze. "Oh my God."

But his words were lost to the sound of tires crunching over gravel. Two lights (entirely earthly, Gabriel noted with some disappointment) crested the lip of the gully, casting both angel and boy into sharp relief. From somewhere up above, a car door opened and then slammed shut.

The woman, Gabriel thought. Of course.

Jack scrambled to his feet, kicking his flashlight and sending it careening out of sight. Bits of black thread were stuck to his pants and his hands were still dyed with blood. He looked about wildly, quite literally caught in the headlights as he tried to gather up his plastic case.

"Jack! Jack!" The woman stood on the embankment and her voice, so raw and terrified, brought Gabriel back from the threshold of unconsciousness. "Jack, where are you?"

She scrambled down into the gully, slipping and sliding on the rocks, her black jacket open and flapping in the wind. "Jack! Jack!"

"Max," Jack sounded less enthusiastic. Quickly, he stepped in-between the woman and Gabriel. "Max, I'm-"

But the woman was wild, her expression that of lioness who has lost a cub. There was danger in her eyes, mixed with blessed relief.

Max reached out and grabbed Jack by the hood of his parka, shaking him mercilessly. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"I didn't-"

"I told you, Jack! I told you!" She released him, causing the boy to pitch back and into the dry wall of the gully. Little pebbles rained down on his head.

"Max, I'm sorry," he bleated, holding up his bloodied hands. "I'm so sorry."

But then the ferocity was gone from the woman's face, only to be replaced with worry. It rose up in her eyes, a perfect phantom, molding her lips and eating away at the hollow places in her cheeks.

"You're hurt," she breathed.

Jack looked at his hands, quite astonished to notice the gore on them. "Oh." His mouth dropped open. "No, I'm fine. It's from him, Max. I was trying to…" he trailed off, shame making him mute.

And for the first time, Max looked at Gabriel.

He met the woman's stare readily, his head propped up in the crook of his wing.

Try, human, he thought, even as the last of his already drained strength began to desert him. Try.

Max's eyes quickly left Gabriel's face, her expression becoming narrow and tight. It was hard for any human, no matter how dulled by the trappings of their world, to hold the gaze of an angel for long.

"You used our medical supplies on it," she said. "We only have that one first aid kit and you've already used up a packet of sutures."

"He was going to die." Jack stepped forward, the eager rebel once more. His messy brown hair waved like grass in the wind. "He was going to-"

"It's dying. Look at it, Jack. Can barely hold its head straight."

"_He_," Jack corrected angrily. "Don't call him 'it'."

"Please-"

"He can talk, you know."

This surprised the woman. Her eyebrows jumped upwards, darting beneath her unkempt bangs. "It spoke to you?"

"_He. _He said thank you, Max. He thanked me for helping him." Jack hunched his shoulders, still defiant, his chin tucked inside the high collar of his parka. "I couldn't leave him out here to die, Max. It was wrong and you know it. You never leave people behind to-"

"Stop!" The woman threw up her hand, the sudden movement revealing something silver hanging about her neck.

Gabriel blinked, his eyesight fading. For a moment, he thought she was wearing a Saint Michael medal.

How appropriate.

And a small part of him, a tiny, insignificant part hoped that his brother was watching now. Watching him become a plaything for humans.

"We have to take him back to Gram's house," Jack was saying, insisting really.

"Are you out of your mind?" Max stepped away and Gabriel noticed her hand drop near her waist.

"You can't just let him die." Jack was standing in front of the woman. "You can't just-"

"Jack, get out of the way."

"What? What are you going to do?"

"Get in the car now."

"No!" The boy screamed. "I won't-"

But he was cut off as Max thrust him to the side, her gun reappearing from out of its hostler.

Jack realized what was happening before Gabriel did. "Don't!" he cried and the desperation in his voice was enough to make the Archangel stir.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, beyond the pain and away from the numbing reaches of blood loss, he registered danger.

With all his might, Gabriel pushed back against the rock, willing his legs to support his weight, praying that his wings would catch the wind and lift him to the heavens.

But as he moved, as he struggled and fought to stand, Jack's poor stitching failed. The sutures snapped open with a snarl. His wound bleed freely and fiercely, dousing his flank.

"Get down!" he heard Max shout.

The world was fast falling black, falling away, away. And Gabriel was alone in the blackness.

Abandoned.

And from somewhere in the dark, a shot rang out.

* * *

**Author's Note:** Thanks so much for stopping by! If you have a free minute, please leave a review. I cherish all feedback. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted sometime next week. Until then, take care and be well!


	3. Chapter Three Poor Charity

**Author's Note: **Hello all! Welcome to chapter three. Poor Gabriel finally gets out of the gully in this installment, although I don't think he finds his new surroundings particularly comfortable, haha. As always, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read this story so far, including **XSilverLiningsX** and **Boundless Hearts** who reviewed the last chapter and **DarkLadyAthara**, who favorited this story. Thank you all so much!

The next chapter is in the works and should be posted sometime next week. If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I would really love to hear from you. Enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Three Poor Charity **

Gabriel awoke to the sound of music. Earthly music. The tune was awkward and ungainly, all percussion and twanging strings. It rang in his ears with a strange ferocity that made his stomach turn over.

_Well she was an American girl, raised on promises_

He groaned, brushing his head against what he thought was the gully wall. But instead of meeting dusty rock and dried soil, his ear touched something soft. Something warm and dry and smelling of moth balls.

His muddled sense of lethargy began to fade, ceding to awareness and curiosity. Gabriel raised his right hand and tentatively felt the material cushioning his body. It was a blanket, or _blankets_, rather. He was resting atop a pile of them, tucked away in the corner of some great, dark space.

A cave, he thought. But no. This place had four walls and an even floor and a ceiling supported by rafters.

He was in a garage, so said the old paint cans and the rusty power tools and the LAPD squad car parked next to him that had an ugly dent in its driver's side door.

Increasingly alert, but not frightened (_never_ frightened), Gabriel moved his feet slowly and tried to rid his lower extremities of the painful stiffness that had settled into his bones. He knew, with a sinking, sickly sort of understanding, that neither legs nor his wings would be able to support his weight.

For now, he was a victim of his own treacherous weakness.

Gabriel inhaled and at once, noticed a tightness in his chest that would not abate. As he took his first, full breath, he realized that he had been striped of his armor. Sucking more air into his lungs, he felt something around his abdomen. Something soft and sticky that pulled at his skin and made him grunt in pain.

And then he remembered. Michael's sword. The desert. The boy called Jack. A final, fatal gunshot.

The distant music bled into his memories and left him with awkward, half-formed impressions and a flood of unspent anger. He turned his head slightly, ears straining, and noticed a door behind him. A few promising rays of light issued from underneath it, along with a sad voice that bleated out what could have passed for a dirge.

_After all it was a great big world, with lots of places to run to._

Gabriel's calm, his stoic and steely exterior, was cracking under the weight of his rage. Groaning, he jerked his arms uselessly, only to find his movement restricted.

Something caught hold of his wrist…a silver snare.

His lip curled as he looked at his left hand. It had been handcuffed to a pipe, a pipe that ran up the length of the wall to the ceiling overhead. He rattled the chain and pulled it taut, intent on snapping the little metal links with ease.

And then he stopped.

_Wait_, a small, persistent voice told him. _Wait and watch. _

If Gabriel had been less attentive, if he had still been hovering on the threshold of unconsciousness and pure vulnerability, he might have thought that it was his brother Michael whispering into his ear.

But the folly of it all was enough to make him snarl with laughter. Michael clearly had no intention of concerning himself with Gabriel's suffering.

It was a bitter truth, one that made him almost regret his own fervent loyalty to his brother…

_No. _He shut his eyes, pushing away the vicious bile of his rage. Such intemperance, such deep, unadulterated anger was dangerous. And Gabriel had never been one to surrender readily to something as immaterial as emotion.

Instead, he channeled his fury into the physical and began to pull at the handcuffs once more. The tiny chain connecting his wrist to the pipe stretched, the metal twisting and Gabriel would have freed himself…had the door not opened.

He stopped then, remembering his indifference and cool detachment. He certainly would not give his captor the satisfaction of seeing him strain against his leash like a mongrel.

_No. No._

Gabriel pointedly looked away from the door and the sudden wash of light that fell over him. He heard someone step into the garage, breathing heavily. A switch clicked into place and a bare bulb overhead flickered to life, illuminating the rest of the square space.

"You're awake." The statement was empty. Hollow.

Gabriel recognized the voice at once.

The woman from the gully, who had an ugly temperament but loved the boy Jack, who had put a gun to his head and tried to blow his brains out, calmly stepped before him.

He was glad to see, despite her obvious attempts at bravery, that she was slightly shaken. Her bleary eyes, stained with lack of sleep, darted quickly to his wings and stayed there for a beat.

Slowly, cautiously, she crouched before an old lawn mower and braced her fingertips against the concrete floor.

Gabriel noticed that she was indeed a police officer. Her dark uniform shirt, which opened at the collar revealing a Kevlar vest beneath, was wrinkled and streaked with dust.

Her light hair hung in dirty strands about her shoulders. And around her neck, as clear as day, she wore a medal on a silver chain.

A medal that bore a tiny, engraved image of Saint Michael on its tin surface.

She looked at Gabriel and Gabriel looked at her and for a moment, neither of them moved.

He held her gaze firmly, studying her frankly petulant eyes and otherwise bad-tempered expression. There was anger in abundance. And disappointment, yes. Gabriel caught a strong current of frustration about her, of dashed dreams and broken hopes.

_A failure_, he thought to himself. _This women is a complete and utter failure._

As if sensing his disapproval, Max abruptly retreated, breaking the standoff and his gaze.

She dropped both her hands between her knees and stared at an oil spot on the floor.

"My nephew says you can talk," she muttered, her jaw working tensely as she chewed out each word. "If that's true, I'm telling you right now, you really need to say something."

Gabriel considered her, his ire growing with each breath. "You tried to shoot me."

She tilted her head back. "You started moving around. I thought you were going to attack us."

"But you had your gun in your hand before I was on my feet."

"Sorry." Max stuck her chin out at him. "I get a little jumpy around a guy that carries a forty-pound mace."

Gabriel, however, was not entirely convinced. "You wanted to kill me," he said, his voice deep and dripping with well-placed disdain.

For an instant, he saw fear tighten her mouth. "No."

His eyes hardened, his every sense attuned to pick out deceit in her words. And yet, to his surprise, there was none. Only the truth. The plain, cold truth.

"If I wanted to kill you I would have left you there." Max raised her narrow shoulders in a half-shrug. "No need to waste a bullet."

Gabriel considered telling her that her bullets and guns and fury were futile against him, he who was made not of flesh but of the very essence of Heaven. And yet, he thought better of it.

Glancing down at his under tunic, he frowned. His stomach wound was no longer bleeding. Gingerly, he lifted the hem of his garment and inspected his injured abdomen.

The gash had been stitched. Neatly. Effectively. There was a bandage around his waist.

Gabriel looked up at the woman.

She too was frowning, her lips lopsided as she bit down on one corner of her mouth. "Took up a lot of sutures, that one. I had none left for the wound on your shoulder, so I had to cauterize it."

Gabriel offered her a cold glance as he turned to inspect his shoulder. Rolling up his sleeve, he saw that the hole had indeed been cauterized. The burn was scabbed over, pulsing with fire as the tissue tried to renew itself. He was suddenly reminded of just how much pain he was in. All the little bruises and cuts that marred his body ached without respite. He could feel the places where Michael's fists, and, in some cases, his feet, had slammed into him.

And despite himself, Gabriel winced.

The woman shifted, her shoes scraping against the concrete floor. This sign of weakness from him clearly disturbed her and for a moment, he thought he saw the woman thaw, thought he saw the great boulder of her restraint roll away to reveal the soft underbelly beneath.

She blinked once, her nose twitching and then seemed to give way.

"Would you like some water?" Max asked. She reached behind to her belt, producing not a gun, but a plastic thermos that sloshed promisingly.

Gabriel, who was not of Earth, and therefore, had no need for physical nourishment, decided to appease her. And, after all, his mouth was horrifically dry.

He nodded, picking up the thermos when she rolled it to him and unscrewing the cap. The water was warm and tasted stale. He took two small sips, let it roll down his throat and then replaced the cap.

A noise turned his attention to something stirring in the shadows. Carefully, so as not to overwork his stomach muscles, Gabriel glanced behind him. Jack stood in the doorway just beyond the threshold, his face alight.

"You're up!"

"Jack," Max barked, cutting through his enthusiasm. "Stay in the house."

Jack took a meager step back. "I _am_ in the house."

Max shook her head, although Gabriel noticed something of repressed amusement in her expression. "You could at least pretend to listen to me, you know, after I dragged your friend all the way home. By the way," she paused, shooting the angel a look, "you owe your life to this boy. He begged me to help you and for him, I did. I'd say thank you if I were you."

"He already did," Jack said, sounding exasperated. "And you really wouldn't have shot him, Max. You only got scared when-."

"In the house," she growled, but Jack just laughed.

The sound was strangely invigorating to Gabriel. A note of pure joy amidst chaos. The faint song hidden in the tempest.

His lips twitched, then settled into a decisive line. He was aware that Max was watching him closely. She had the keen gaze of a soldier, the intuition of her hunter. But in the end, Gabriel knew she was frightened of him.

As she well should be.

After a moment, she reached forward cautiously and took the thermos from him. "I'm not happy having you in this house," she said, her eyes glued to his wings. "And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like nothing is going on. I was in L.A. when this all started. All _this_." She jerked her head, indicating the garage door and, subsequently, the world at large.

Gabriel understood what she meant, but said nothing. It was not his place to explain to her why the Father had given up on his children. That had always Michael's prerogative. Not his.

And for an instant, he almost wished his brother was with him, in the dank and musty garage, a being of splendor reduced by the trappings of the mortal world. But Gabriel was alone, meant to suffer in solitude. Unconsciously, his fingers tightened around the blanket underneath him.

Max caught sight of the movement and withdrew a few paces. "You know," she said, her head cocked to one side, "I'm a cop. I've seen some…stuff. But what's happening in L.A….what's happening all over…I don't know."

"But you came for me," Jack said suddenly. He was leaning against the open door now. "You got us out of the city."

Max smiled tightly at him. "That's right, kiddo."

There was something unnatural about her phrasing and the sound of her words, which were drowning in uncertainty and regret.

Gabriel's attention was piqued. He watched as the woman gripped the thermos, her knuckles turning bone white.

"I was working the night shift," she said slowly, almost to herself. "I was working the night shift when I got a call on the radio. Officer down. My partner and I, we hoofed it to the scene. Figured it's gotta be shots fired or something, but no." Max paused, her veins on the back of her hand showing as she squeezed the thermos tighter. "Something was wrong. People were…they were going crazy. Like out of a horror movie. They didn't even look human anymore…"

"They weren't," Gabriel interrupted.

Max's eyebrows jumped upward. "What?"

"The weakest willed are the easiest to turn," he replied. "The people you saw were not human."

"Then what the hell were they?" Max asked in a strained voice.

But Gabriel said nothing. It was not his place.

The silence that fell between them was an ugly thing. Protracted and uncomfortable. Even Jack seemed effected by it. The boy fidgeted, then stepped back into the house, his face half-hidden behind the door.

Max looked at Gabriel and this time, she held his gaze. "I'm gonna ask you now and I want the truth," she said, "what are you?"

He did not consider telling her a lie, but readily laid the truth at her feet.

"Gabriel the Archangel. The Messenger of God."

He had to admit, she took it better than most humans.

Max's face paled, leaving her washed-out and frail-looking. Her power, her arrogance _and_ ignorance disappeared, only to be replaced by blind confusion.

"I don't…" she muttered vaguely, pressing her thumb to the space directly in-between her eyes. "I don't know…."

But Jack, as always, was more precise.

"His wings," the boy breathed. "That's why he has wings."

Gabriel exhaled sharply through his nose. _From out of the mouth of babes the truth shall come_, he thought wryly. That was certainly the case when it came to Jack, who was a bright beacon of uncommon goodness in such an awful, awful world.

Max, for the first time, was quiet. Gabriel watched her inner battle play out, watched as she struggled with herself and what he had told her. Unwelcome emotion showed on her face when she finally looked at him, raw and unchecked. Fierce and feral.

"I can't deal with this now," she said, her body jerking as she spoke. "I can't…I can't deal with this. I have a kid here I have to take care of and…and either you're fucking crazy or I am or we're both fucking crazy. Whatever."

"Yes," Gabriel said, pleased that he at last had the upper hand. "Whatever, indeed."

"I can't believe," she said, her mouth fumbling over each word. "I can't believe you want me to sit here and listen to this."

And she looked at him, her eyes wide and wild, her appearance one of perfect bewilderment and fear, yes, fear.

Gabriel said nothing and let the stillness envelope them. In the house, the same song was playing again, the words feather-light but piercing in their strange, sorrowful gravity.

_And if she had to die trying, there was one little promise she was gonna keep. _

After a few minutes, the boy broke the delicate web of silence.

"Max," he said softly. And strangely enough, it was Jack who moved to comfort the woman now. The lamb became the lion as he stepped out of the house and wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "It's all right," he told her gently. "At least he told us the truth."

Something in his words must have startled Max, for she was on her feet in an instant. Gabriel observed her movements, studied the tense line of her body and the way her arms swung in agitation and how she twisted her head about on her neck.

"It's not the truth," she told him, bracing her hands on his shoulders. "I knew this guy was trouble. I…I should've left him in that damn gully-"

"But you did not," Gabriel said, acknowledging her poor charity for what it was.

Max stared at him and he stared back and for a moment, he felt some pity for her stir within him.

_Peace, human_, he thought. _Let us have peace._

Whether Max understood him or not was unclear. She whirled away from him, pushing Jack towards the door.

"We're done for tonight," she said firmly. "Done."

As he was marshaled out of the garage, Gabriel saw Jack glance at him.

"Sorry," the boy mouthed with a shrug.

And from deep within himself, Gabriel found a smile for Jack. An old smile, one that he had kept packed and hidden in the back of his heart.

But then Max shut the door on him. A few minutes later, Gabriel heard music coming from within the house once more. And he listened.

_God it's so painful when something that's so close, is still so far out of reach._

_Michael_, he thought, unable to keep his mind off his brother for long. _See now what you have done.  
_

* * *

**Author's Note: **In case you're interested, the song featured in this chapter is Tom Petty's "American Girl". Although Petty's version is rather upbeat, I thought Rasputina's sad, soft cover fit the mood of this story well.


	4. Chapter Four The Numinous Experience

**Author's Note: **Whew! This chapter turned out much longer than expected. I suppose the characters just decided to take matters into their own hands for a change, haha. As always, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to everyone that has read/reviewed/favorited this fic so far. I cannot possibly express how much your support means. Also, I would like to especially thank **DarkLadyAthara **and **moondawntreader** for reviewing the last chapter. Thanks for the feedback, guys! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Four The Numinous Experience **

Over the course of the next three days, Gabriel found himself getting better acquainted with his human hosts. Although he was confined to the garage, he began to discern the habits of those occupying the house and he soon recognized their daily patterns, which lent a sense of familiarity to his otherwise unpleasant situation.

The humans always rose early in the morning, before the weak light of the winter sun could reach its fingers under the garage door, and he would hear them moving inside their home, through the halls and into each room. As the day progressed, either Max or Jack would turn on some sort of music and keep it playing late into the night. The boy, Gabriel guessed, usually went to bed early, for after a certain hour, he would hear the sounds of the woman alone, pacing, always pacing, up and down the length of the house.

She, it seemed, never slept.

In their dealings with him, the humans were also very routine. Max came into the garage every few hours, bringing food, which he refused, and more water in the plastic thermos. She also brought fresh gauze and dutifully changed his bandages twice a day. Her bedside manner, while not entirely gentle, was at the very least efficient. Gabriel found that he could appreciate her own sense of detachment, which manifested itself in her terse nature. Most of the time, Max refused to look him in the eyes, instead focusing on her little separate tasks as she poured antiseptic on his wounds or stuffed the soiled gauze into a brown paper bag that she always carried with her.

Gabriel, for the most part, did not attempt to engage her in conversation. But on the third morning of his stay, after observing the severe frown lines that crossed Max's forehead, and her drawn, pinched features, he finally felt moved to speak.

"You have some medical training," he said, watching as she removed the bandage around his abdomen and peeled off the medical tape.

"Not much," Max grumbled. Her head was bowed and she concentrated on undoing the gauze. In the harsh glare of the bare light bulb overhead, she looked like a faded doll, something that had been stuffed in an attic for far too long, causing her hair to turn brittle and her skin to crack.

"I learned first aid at the academy," she explained, "the rest you pick up along the way. Sometimes, during emergencies, you have to jump in, you know, before the paramedics get to the scene. I remember a couple years back, God, this poor guy. Shot through the neck. We scooped him right up, threw him in the back of the squad car and drove him to the E.R. It was messy. No time to be squeamish."

Gabriel raised his eyebrows, surprised that Max would talk so freely after she hadn't spared him a "good morning" or a "how are you feeling?" in quite a while.

But as he observed her patient ministrations, his keen eyes spotted the oval badge she still had pinned to her chest.

"You enjoy being a police officer?" he asked, reading the words on her shield.

"I guess."

"How long?"

"What?"

"How long have you been a policewoman?"

Max shrugged. "Uh, fourteen years. I signed up right out of college. Was sworn in a week before my twenty-second birthday."

"You believe in helping people," he said thoughtfully, even as she doused his flank with antiseptic. For a moment, he locked his jaw, riding out the waves of pain until the fire in his flesh subsided.

"You…you are a protector," he grunted through clenched teeth. And even then, Gabriel did not fully realize the irony of his words, could not bring himself to remember that Michael was the protector, the true guardian…

"Something like that," Max muttered. She screwed the cap back onto her bottle of antiseptic and looked at it with a frown. The container was half-empty. "If you get an infection, we're gonna have a big problem."

"My flesh will not fester," Gabriel said. "I am not mortal. No sickness will touch me." It was the first time since divulging his name three days ago that he had alluded to his celestial origin, although clearly, the subject still did not sit well with Max.

She shuddered as he spoke and glanced at his wings. It was a primal reaction. The numinous experience. No human was completely immune to it, even those that denied the existence of God. It had been inscribed on the souls of men since Creation and would remain there as a relic, a permanent shadow of what was lost and might never be found again.

Gabriel knew this, but Max did not. She was a human, vile in her simplicity. Uncouth and unkempt and unwanted by God who had made her.

Gabriel did not know if he should pity her or not.

_Wait and watch_, the small voice told him once more.

But Gabriel was impatient.

Max finished tending to his wounds and sat back on her heels. Even now, her eyes were drooping and she stifled a yawn against the back of her hand.

"All right, you should be good for now."

Gabriel nodded, unable, or unwilling, to thank her. He watched as Max gathered up her things, her roll of medical tape and the bottle of antiseptic and the paper bag with the soiled bandages in it. As she was heading for the door, she paused briefly, her hand gripping the knob.

"You should get some rest, maybe," she said over her shoulder. Her voice was tinged with a note of exhaustion and Gabriel wondered that she did not fall asleep atop her own two feet.

"I would say the same for you," he replied neutrally.

"Yeah, right," she mumbled and was gone.

Gabriel did not miss her company. Although he was weary, (bone-tired, really) he tried to stay awake, flexing his wings so that they wouldn't stiffen and moving his legs about as much as he dared to keep his blood flowing steadily. He still was not strong enough to support his full weight, but another day or so might see him able to move about the garage. In order to get up, however, he would have to break the handcuffs and something told him that such an action wouldn't inspire trust in Max.

_Perhaps_, he thought, _I might convince her to untie me. _Voicing his request to the human would certainly put a sizable dent in his pride and ruffle his dignity, but he was willing to compromise if it meant having peace…and some much needed freedom.

As he was trying to decide just which course of action would be tactically appropriate, he heard the door to the garage open and close. This time, Gabriel did not even turn to look at the intruder, assuming that Max had returned…perhaps she had left something behind?

But then Jack plopped down in front of him, the pockets of his flannel shirt bulging, his eyes wide and slightly nervous.

"Hey," the boy breathed. "Bet you didn't expect to see me."

"No," Gabriel admitted as Jack pulled a bagged sandwich and two cans of soda out of his pockets. Although the child had come into the garage on several occasions, he was always heavily supervised by Max, who kept her nephew on a tighter leash than she did the handcuffed angel.

"Where is your aunt?" he asked, wondering what mischief his unexpected visitor had indulged in now.

"Sleeping," Jack told him. He crossed his legs and sat directly before Gabriel. "I don't think she's shut her eyes since we got out here. But it was bound to catch up with her, right? My science teacher told me that people go crazy if they don't get enough sleep. Max isn't crazy, but she's definitely grouchy."

"Yes," Gabriel found himself agreeing. Strangely, it was much easier for him to talk to the boy. Where the woman at times disgusted him, the child's presence was truly endearing.

Something of Jack's innocence and natural goodness hearkened to what remained of Gabriel's compassion and despite his unsentimental temperament, he was glad that the boy had come to see him.

"I brought you something," Jack said and he rolled one of the cans to Gabriel.

The angel took it in his hand, feeling the cold metal slide against his calloused palm. "I thank you, but I have no need for it."

"Are you sure? Because Max has been giving you water for three days straight. Don't you want something…I don't know…tasty?"

Jack's enthusiasm was enough to make Gabriel's lips twitch. "I do not drink much of the water your aunt brings me. My body cannot perish from thirst or hunger as your's can."

"Oh." Jack tilted his head to the side, his fingers fussing with the sandwich he had in a plastic bag. "I guess you won't want half of my lunch, then. We only had four slices of bread left. I saved two for Max and I thought I could share the other two with you. Are you sure? Max says she doesn't know when we'll have fresh bread again with everything that's going on in the city. We'll be eating food out of cans soon."

Gabriel was impressed by child's willingness to part with something that he himself might soon not have. Inclining his head, he looked the boy in the eyes and allowed his expression to soften. His heartbeat steadied and slowed…and lightened.

"That is kind of you, Jack. Please keep the food for yourself. I wish for you to enjoy it."

Unlike Max, the boy managed to hold his gaze. "If you're sure," he replied.

"I am certain."

Jack took one half of the sandwich and bit into the corner. "Can I ask you something?"

"Yes, you may," Gabriel said, although he suspected he knew the boy's question already.

"Are you really an angel?"

"Yes." And as if it put emphasis on his point, Gabriel twitched his wings, letting his lethal feathers fan out against old blankets beneath him.

"And you said your name was Gabriel?" Jack asked through a mouthful of bread and peanut butter.

"Yes, Gabriel the Archangel."

Jack leaned forward onto his knees, his elbows resting on his sneaker tops. "Gabriel, like the angel that came to Mary and told her she was going to have Jesus?"

This time, Gabriel only nodded.

Jack chewed thoughtfully over this. "Then can I ask you something else? Why are you here, exactly? Why aren't you in Heaven or with the other angels?"

This question stung Gabriel more than he thought it would. As if in response to his mental turmoil, he wounds ached anew, the stitches in his abdomen burning as he took another breath.

Yes, why wasn't he with the other angels…with his brother, Michael….

"I was sent here on an…errand," he said, fumbling over the word even as he tried to remain impassive.

Jack finished the first half of his sandwich and started on the second. "What kind of errand?"

"I cannot say," Gabriel said a bit more sharply than he intended to.

Jack, however, remained unfazed. "Did someone try to hurt you while you were here on your errand? Is that why you're all banged up now?"

Gabriel took a deep breath, feeling the air spiral through his lungs. There was no avoiding his torment now. He was a fool to think he could ignore what Michael had done to him…what he was doing to him….

_Watch me now, brother_, he thought, the words sounding as fearsome as a trumpet's call in his anguished mind. _See who you have humbled._

"Hey." Jack put down the soda he had been drinking and gazed at the angel. "Sorry if I'm asking too many questions. I talk too much sometimes."

"No." Gabriel tried to find a sympathetic look for the boy. "You have not troubled me. To answer your question, yes, I was wounded during my mission. I could not fly and therefore, could not return to my home. You found me as I lay dying."

"I didn't think angels could die." Jack played with the metal top on his can, twisting it back and forth.

"Our physical bodies may be destroyed only under certain circumstances," he said, his voice emotionless and even. "But we do not die as humans do. Our souls are quickly returned to our flesh and we may go on living."

Jack folded his arms around his knees. "Oh. I guess me and Max didn't do anything special then, by finding you, I mean. Probably caused you more trouble by dragging you here."

Something pricked at Gabriel's heart then. Something sharp and poignant and yet strangely welcome. And despite his frigid nature, he found that he wanted to reassure the boy, to comfort him.

"That is not true," he said firmly. "I am grateful for your charity and kindness, Jack. You showed me compassion when no else, when no one…" he trailed off, unwilling to mention Michael even now. "I thank you," he finished. "I thank you both."

Jack offered him a crooked smile that spoke volumes.

"It's a good thing we were out there, then. To help you. There aren't many people around otherwise," the boy said with a shrug. "I guess that's why Max took me here after we left the city-though I hope my mom and dad are able to follow us."

"Your parents?" Gabriel said, his throat treacherously dry. For a moment, he considered taking a drink from the can Jack had brought him, but then thought better of it.

"Yeah." Jack shuffled his feet on the dusty floor. "My mom and dad weren't with us when we left the city. Max said she couldn't find them when she came to get me. I was sleeping, you know, in our apartment. It was really late…like two in the morning or something…and then the noise outside woke me up."

The boy suddenly seemed reticent. Gabriel felt the dryness in his throat increase, growing until it became a steady ache. The veins in his neck were strained.

He knew all too well what had happened in the cities. He had witnessed the violence and destruction from on high. The weakest were the easiest to turn. In a matter of hours, the possessed had decimated the population, killing those who remained unaffected and sending thousands into flight, into chaotic, hopeless flight.

But where could the humans go? To whom could the possibly turn during the very hour of their extinction? There was no balm in Gilead. No refuge. No savior.

At the time, Gabriel had experienced some sense of guilty satisfaction as he watched the whole of the human race descend into anarchy and madness. It was a just punishment, after all, for those who had been given everything and yet destroyed the greatest of gifts. And yet now the notion did not sit easy with him…not when paired with an innocent soul such as Jack, who seemed to hold only the promise of brightness.

Suddenly, he remembered something Michael had told him not so long ago, something of those humans who refused to be bowed despite the abject darkness around them. Those precious few…

Gabriel set his jaw, angry at himself, angry at his brother and angry for Jack, who did not deserve to be tainted by the sins of his elders.

The boy was looking at his feet now, biting his lip. "People were screaming in the streets," he said. "I got out of bed and looked out the window, but I couldn't see anything. I thought it was someone playing a joke, just having fun and messing around. But then I went into my parents' room and they weren't there. They were gone. I was thinking…I mean, I was actually going to go out and look for them, but then Max came for me. She left her post and everything. Police officers aren't supposed to do that, especially during a disaster. But she was there and she took me downstairs through the garage and to her squad car. We only just made it out of the city…barely made it…"

Gabriel was feeling sick. Truly sick. He curled his thick fingers into fists and felt his knuckles pop.

He did not know what to say, what words of comfort and assurance he could offer this poor, lost child.

After a moment of silence, Jack seemed to remember himself. He lifted his eyes and gazed at Gabriel's face with nothing but trust, pure and simple and vulnerable.

"Hey, since you're an angel…since you're here now…do you know what's going on? What's happening in the cities and all? Do you know-"

And Gabriel, who wanted to spare the boy as much pain as possible, found he could not lie.

"I cannot say," he replied, his deep voice reverberating within his broad chest.

Jack rolled his shoulders. "Oh, okay. I just thought I'd, you know, mention it. Sorry for asking so many questions."

He stood, dusting off his pants and gathering the remnants of his lunch. "I guess I should get back inside. If Max wakes up and finds that I'm gone-"

"She will be angry," Gabriel said, a hint of a scowl curving his lips as he recalled Max's fury when Jack had run off to visit him back at the gully.

"Yeah," Jack replied. And displaying a remarkable amount of resilience for someone his age, he laughed. "I'll see you later. Feel better, okay Gabriel?"

The use of his name, so off-hand and unexpected, brought an unusual warmth to the angel's heart.

"Jack," he called out as the boy neared the door. "Do not be troubled. I promise…I promise you that things will be well again."

It was an empty vow, one that probably soothed him instead of the boy.

But when Jack spoke next, his voice was filled with happiness…and relief. "Thanks," he said and then was out the door.

Gabriel listened to his retreating footsteps, staring at the spot on the floor that the boy had occupied minutes before. Under his hand, he still held the metal can. It was only a child's gift, he thought, but valued nonetheless.

* * *

"When are you going to tell Jack that his parents are dead?"

"What? What the hell are you talking about?" Max looked up quickly, her hands hovering near the wound to his shoulder. She was kneeling on the floor next to him, attempting to change his bandages for the last time that day.

Night had already fallen, the promising rays of sunlight withdrawing from underneath the garage door, leaving the room cold and stark in the glare of the lone light bulb that hung overhead. Jack had gone to bed, or so Gabriel guessed, and he was regrettably left alone with Max.

Although she had been able to catch some sleep during the day, her brief rest had improved neither her mood nor her appearance. As she squatted before him, Gabriel noticed how harassed she looked, and he understood then that her sense of emotional control was indeed a fragile thing, in danger of rupturing at the slightest provocation.

Max, like almost all humans, was weak. And her flaws were showing now, seeping through the cracks in her restraint, leaving her faded and damaged and so very wretched.

But Gabriel had the heart of angel, an angel of the highest order and he could see what troubled her, just as plainly as he saw the tiny scars on her knuckles and the discolored skin under her eyes.

Max was lying to her nephew about his parents. And she was lying to herself.

The truth was painfully apparent. Although he tried to remain neutral, Gabriel could not help but feel his wounded pride mollified as he watched the woman wilt under his questioning.

She flinched when he spoke to her, recoiling as if he were a venomous viper found beneath a stone in a tamed garden. Sitting back on her heels, she dropped her hands onto her thighs and fisted her fingers in the black fabric of her pants.

"I don't know that they're dead," she said, her voice shaking, registering an octave higher than usual.

Gabriel raised a brow. "You are a liar."

"Shut up," Max snapped, but her words were powerless. Weak and empty things that Gabriel deflected with his own coldness. "Do you really think it would be smart to tell him now? Do you think that I could even do it…even have the strength to…." She broke off, and, to his utter amazement, began to sob.

Wretched creature, he thought. Worthless human.

And yet, despite his utter abhorrence of her and everything she stood for, Gabriel felt some measure of diluted sympathy for Max.

God had made him a soldier. A blessed, holy herald who would blow his trumpet at the end of the world. An embodiment of the purest righteousness and highest justice.

But He had also made him compassionate.

Gabriel looked down at Max, as he had looked down upon all humans from the time of their birth until their souls returned to Heaven for judgment.

She was embarrassed by her emotion, cringing and crying, her hands pressed against her face to hide her tears and stifle her sobs.

The angel stirred slightly, uncomfortable by his position, but bound by his heart and mind and spirit to comfort her.

"Jack's parents," he asked, "how were they related to you?"

Slowly, reluctantly, Max dropped her hands from her face, revealing eyes that were bloodshot and watery. She bit down hard on her lower lip. "His mother, Laurie, was my older sister. She was…she was a good person. Her husband too. They raised their son right."

"Yes, they did," Gabriel replied. He was relieved to see that Max had settled already, had regained her composure and was now looking to his wounds.

She went about her work in silence and he did not press her to speak. The pain in her heart was indeed a virulent thing, powerful and insistent. Gabriel would not force her to reveal it to him…nor to Jack.

_Another matter of free will_, he thought wryly and tried to keep still as Max picked at the scab over his shoulder wound.

He did not expect her to mention the matter again, but something dark and deep must have compelled her to speak, to push the words past her lips as she sat there in the garage with him, crouched under the unforgiving light of the bare bulb.

"It was an accident," she said suddenly and her hand, which had been braced on his shoulder, now gripped him fiercely. "It was…it was…I never would have…"

But she couldn't finish.

Outside the garage, the dark of night ceded to white light, pure, heavenly light. The large door shuddered and creaked on its tracks, the old wood bulging grotesquely.

Gabriel heard the pounding and knew at once who had come. He glanced briefly at the medal hanging around Max's neck, saw the image of his brother pressed into tin and reduced to a mere talisman, a good luck charm.

He wondered, vaguely, what his brother would think when he saw it…

But it didn't mattered. Nothing mattered. Not his suffering. Not his loss. Nothing…

Gabriel fought the urge to shut his eyes. He did not…he could not see _him_ now. No. No.

Max's weak cry of fear brought him back to the world and drawing from his endless, inner well of strength, Gabriel forced himself to look towards the light.

In a flash of glorious fury, the flimsy door was cast open and the radiant illumination entered the garage as a cleansing, all-encompassing fire.

And radiating with its power, with the very essence of the heavens, Michael the Archangel stepped inside.

* * *

**Author's Note:** The Numinous Experience mentioned in this chapter is actually based on a theological concept popularized by the German scholar, Ruldolf Otto. In short, the numinous is used as an adjective to characterize the human experience of the presence of the divine. Otto divided the numinous into two categories; mysterium tremendous (fear and trembling) and mysterium facinans (attraction and fascination). Right now, I would say Max probably embodies the former, while Jack has embraced the latter.

Once more, thanks so much for taking the time to read. If you have the chance, please leave a review, even if it's only a few words. I would really, really love to hear from you. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

The next chapter is in the works and should be posted next week. Until then, take care and be well!


	5. Chapter Five Prayer

**Author's Note: **Hmm, I had every intention of making this chapter substantially shorter than the last one, roughly 1,500 and yet here we are, nearly 4,300 words later. ^_^

And wow! I still can't get over the amazing response I received for chapter four. You guys are awesome! Thank you **DarkLadyAthara**, **XSilverLiningsX**, **Jade**, **moondawntreader**, **Fire Daughter**, **jumpreddog**, **Boundless Hearts**, **Yes-Man** and everyone that has read/favorited/added this story to their alerts so far. You have no idea how happy your reviews make me. So once more, thank you all, from the bottom of my heart! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Five Prayer**

The light swept through the garage. Gabriel felt it race over him, seeping eagerly into the pores of his flesh, passed his coiled muscles and labyrinth of veins, through his bones and into his marrow, down, down, down into his inner being, into the farthest reaches of his wounded and broken soul.

But it was Michael who had brought the light with him. Michael the betrayer. Michael the absent, uncaring brother. And just as the warmth reached him, he rejected it, accepting instead the moody coldness of his own misery.

There was much to be forgiven, and although Gabriel would always open his heart to his brother, he could not do so now.

Not when some manner of apology, of remorse and recognition, was entirely lacking.

Instead, he turned his gaze away from Michael, who was glorious in his state of heavenly perfection, and focused on the trembling, cringing form of Max.

The woman was still on her knees beside him, her fear having taken the last of her brashness, leaving her pale and prostrate.

"Oh God," she moaned, unable to tear her eyes from the archangel that towered before her, a being of the highest majesty and most terrible power.

But as soon as Michael entered the garage, the light faded behind him and he stood plainly in his armor, his wings folded behind him. The dark of the night returned and with it the sounds of the wind rustling through the low-lying shrubs. Overhead, electricity hummed through the bare light bulb.

"Max! Max!"

Gabriel himself started when he heard Jack's voice echo through the house. The boy had obviously been roused from sleep by Michael's less than subtle entrance, and in an instant, he was bounding through the door into the garage.

"Jack, no!" Somehow, Max managed to get to her feet and throw herself directly in-between the child and the two angels.

And Gabriel, for all his cynicism, had to admire her bravery.

But then he was reminded of the young man who had faced him on the mountaintop and his heart knotted.

_How could he have failed…_

Gabriel stared at his hands, his fingers tensing into fists. He hoped that Michael could feel his frustration now. The wave upon wave of regret and doubt and anger.

But his brother did not stir. Did not spare a glance for the one who laid sprawled on the floor, weakened and pained by a wound caused by his own sword.

Instead, he looked only at the two humans and that same, eternal sympathy, that same love he held for them rose up in his eyes, rendering him gentle.

"Do not be afraid," Michael said, speaking only to Max and Jack. Apparently, he did not intend to greet his injured brother.

_Perhaps_, Gabriel thought viciously, _he is ashamed of himself, as he well should be. Perhaps he cannot bear to face me._

To prove his point, he forced himself to look at Michael, but was wretchedly disappointed when he saw that his fellow archangel was as collected as ever.

Collected and calm and confident.

Resentment reared its ugly head within Gabriel, and he emitted a low growl.

But Michael, once more, did not seem to notice him.

"Please," Max repeated in a high, cracking voice. "Don't hurt us. Don't…don't hurt the kid."

Michael took a step towards her. "Max, do you remember-"

But he had miscalculated, had underestimated the woman before him who clung so fiercely to her young nephew.

Some new emotion seemed to come over Max as Michael drew closer. Something dangerous and determined. Quickly, she thrust Jack back in the direction of the house and drew her gun. The safety clicked off, sounding a warning as potent as the rattle on a hissing snake.

"Don't," she said, no, _commanded_. "Don't come any closer or I'll blow your fucking head off."

Although her defiance was futile, Gabriel found he could almost appreciate her desire to keep her nephew safe. Her ferocity, once tempered by maternal instinct, was less repulsive than he had once believed it to be.

But even though she stood there now, her gun pointed at the space between Michael's eyes, she appeared only tragic. A pitiful, wasted human who had no chance at life, who had no chance at survival as the world itself fell down around her.

And Gabriel found he could not watch her be destroyed. He looked away.

Michael however, obligingly raised his hands in a placating gesture. He kept his eyes trained on Max's face, as if ignoring the gun would make the weapon disappear altogether.

"Max," he said carefully, "can you tell me what medal it is that you have around your neck?"

She did not waver. "You need to get out of here. _Now_."

"The medal," Michael insisted. "Tell me what medal that is."

Hesitation now. Max chewed on her lip. "St. Michael the Archangel."

Michael's features were placid. Slowly, very slowly, he began to lower his hands. "And St. Michael, he is the patron saint of police officers."

"Yeah." Max's finger was still posed over the trigger.

"And you prayed to him every day."

"What?"

"Every day, as you sat in your squad car before your shift started, you prayed to St. Michael. Do you remember the prayer you said? The one your partner taught you?"

"Uh." Max shifted her stance, her gun bobbing as she moved. "Uh."

"Can you say the prayer?" Michael pressed her. His hands were by his waist now.

Max shuffled her feet again, her anger and boldness fading into something that almost resembled compliance. Almost_._

The change was indeed dramatic, though not enough to impress Gabriel. He knew his brother had a certain way with humans. He always had.

"The prayer," Michael repeated. "Can you say the prayer?"

As if compelled to by the sheer force of instinct, Max began, "_St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle_."

"Defend us in battle," his brother echoed.

"_Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil…"_

"Our protection."

"_May God rebuke him, we humbly pray: and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God…"_

"By the power of God."

"_Thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen_."

"Amen," Michael replied and calmly, so very calmly, he reached forward and took the gun from Max. Once the weapon was in his hands, he clicked the safety on, slid the clip out and placed both gun and clip on the roof of the squad car.

Max stood before him, pale and trembling. "Look, I don't know what you want and I don't care, but please, just leave us alone. We're-"

Michael silenced her with a smile. "I only want to thank you," he said. "You cared for my brother when he was in need."

The words stung Gabriel, but he struggled to remain indifferent. Michael could acknowledge his suffering and yet, he made no move to address to his brother directly…or to apologize for the great violation of the trust between them.

"Your brother?" Max stammered. She glanced at Gabriel and then back at the other angel.

"Yes, my brother. He is called Gabriel and I am Michael. You know us, Max, although you think you do not."

But the woman ignored him. "Then you can take your brother. Just take him and go. I won't try to stop you. No trouble, okay? No trouble."

"No trouble," Michael repeated.

Gabriel wanted to contradict him. His lips were pulled tight over his teeth in a pained grimace and he felt his great frame shudder with repressed rage.

_Look at me brother_, he demanded silently. _Look at me._

And perhaps Michael heard him. Or perhaps he did not and it was mere chance that directed his gaze to Gabriel.

They locked eyes for all too brief a moment and Michael, his beloved brother, flesh of flesh, only said, "Wait and watch."

_Wait and watch._

It was a simple phrase. Simple and entirely unsatisfying.

Gabriel turned away from Michael, not bothering to disguise his disgust any longer.

"May I speak with you," he heard his brother ask Max, "inside your house?"

"Wait-I-" She tried to stall him, but was helpless. As powerless and as weak as the wounded archangel she had kept locked in her garage for the past three days.

Gabriel listened as Michael's footsteps retreated inside the house. And after a moment of painful hesitation, Max followed him.

Her gun, Gabriel noticed, she left on the roof of the squad car.

* * *

Max was afraid. Very, very afraid. This fear, this form of incessant, abject terror, was new to her. A fresh horror. Something she had neither experienced nor witnessed before in her thirty-six years of life.

Of course, there had been times in the past when she had been scared. Like when she was a rookie cop doing a routine traffic stop on a guy who had a broken taillight. His plates, once run through, had come back stolen. And when Max ordered him to step out of his vehicle, he had pulled a knife on her.

There had also been that other time, when her mom had phoned her from the family home in upstate New York to tell her that she had fourth stage breast cancer.

And then five days ago, when she stood in the stairwell of her sister's apartment and looked Laurie in the eyes, looked into her black, inhuman eyes….

But things were different now and Max wasn't just scared. She was terrified. Frightened. The emotion, a volatile tyrant, settled around her as she watched Michael take a seat in the kitchen, his large wings dropping neatly behind the chair almost as an afterthought. And they were wings, real, honest to God wings, similar to the one's the wounded Gabriel had.

Max stood by the sink and braced her hands on its cool, porcelain edge, trying to steady herself.

This couldn't be real. She didn't want it to be.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to count her heartbeats. One, two, three. One, two….

But her mind revolted, reminding her that rationality was best reserved for rational circumstances, for things that were cut and dry, manageable, understandable. Not this. Certainly not this.

Max felt as though she were detached from her body. Her very skin was foreign, something cold and prickly covering her bones. And when the creature…this Michael, looked at her, she felt her resolve tremble. Tremble and then fall to pieces.

The winged man raised one hand and Max noticed the black lines that criss-crossed his skin, saw that he had long fingers and tiny, fair hairs on the backs of his knuckles.

"Please," he said, "I think you should sit down."

Jack, who had followed them in from the garage, plopped down across the table from the stranger. Although he bounced the toe of his right foot on the floor, Max knew his excess energy was from excitement, not fear. Her nephew had always been uncommonly brave, and uncommonly perseverant.

And at this moment, she envied his control.

The kitchen was silent now. Max had turned off the stereo some hours ago and the blackness of the night fell about the house, lending a sense of claustrophobia to the otherwise open acres surrounding their property. There was something very suffocating about being alone, she decided, especially now when all of L.A. had descended into madness and the rest of the world didn't seem that far behind.

The old house, which had been built by her eccentric Grandmother who had tried her hand at horse breeding and failed, sat on thirty acres of land. It was twenty-five miles from the nearest town, not far enough to be cut off the outside world, but sufficiently secluded to keep them safe from whatever chaos had gripped mankind. Max had brought Jack there, hoping to lay low until things were sorted out and some manner of order was restored in L.A. But instead of finding peace and a secure place to hide, something had come looking for them.

Something Max wasn't entirely sure she believed in, even though she had the evidence right before her eyes.

"Please," she said, summoning the courage to address the stranger. "We just want to be left alone. You can take your…brother and go. Just go. I don't want any problems."

"I understand that," Michael replied. His voice was slow and warm, so different from the abrupt tones of Gabriel. "I promise you will not be troubled. Please, sit down. You are tired, that I can tell, and you must recover your strength. Please." Once more, he gestured at the chair.

Max, however, wouldn't budge. She squared her hips, straining to look casual if not a little confrontational. "I think you should just say what you have to and be done with it," she said.

There was no use beating around the bush. Max had never had much patience for the superfluous and now, being in what she perceived to be a dangerous situation, she wanted to get to the heart of the matter right away.

The stranger looked at her carefully, his wings fluttering as he turned to face her.

Max glanced at Jack and then back at Michael, instinct keeping her on her guard. That was the one good thing about being a cop, she realized. After fourteen years on the force, she had learned to focus her energy into something useful, to stay awake and alert at all times, to notice the slightest of movements. She could pick out a guy sliding his hand to his pocket, reaching for a gun. Could see a woman working her jaw as she tried to swallow a bag of crack. And she could see this stranger, this Michael, as he shifted his booted feet against the floor, as he moved his arms so that his elbows were off the table.

She saw him and she watched him.

After a moment, the stranger spoke again and his voice was surprisingly soothing.

"You are very frightened," he said.

Max tossed her head. "Understandably so, I think."

"It was kind of you to help my brother. Kind and brave and-"

"Foolish?"

Michael offered her a small smile. "No, not at all. You saved his life and I thank you for it."

Max was unwilling to accept his open acknowledgement of her charity. She folded her arms across her chest, her back pressed against the cold sink. "Yeah, well, I think you should just take him now and get the hell out of here. I've done all that I can for him."

"But Max-" Jack was quick to interrupt her, but she silenced him with a glare.

"You will be displeased with me then, I fear," Michael continued, politely ignoring the exchange between aunt and nephew. "I have something to ask of you, Max."

She didn't like it when he used her name, and despite her logical nature, she thought it might be best if she didn't waste time trying to decide just how he knew who she was. The mystery itself sent an odd sort of chill up her spine.

"What?" she muttered.

Michael put his hand down on the table, flattening out his long fingers. "I was wondering if you wouldn't mind playing host to my brother for several days more. He needs to rest and I cannot take him with me yet. You would only have to continue caring for him as you already have. I ask nothing more of you."

Max felt her muscles tighten. She bit down hard on her lip. The stranger's request had been phrased and delivered with a sense of humility, of understanding and thoughtfulness. Forcing herself to meet his eyes, she studied his expression, looking, as she had been taught to in the academy, for any sign of deception or nervousness.

If he was lying to her…

But Michael's face was open, kind even. And yet, she still felt unsettled. No matter how she tried to square things away in her mind, she couldn't possibly convince herself that the being before her was human. The wings were one thing, of course, but there was something odd, something unearthly and beautiful and daunting about his features.

Max's fear began to cede to curiosity. If these people were going to barge into her house whenever they pleased and demand hospitality, then she better damn well know what was going on.

"Not so fast," she said, sucking some much needed oxygen into her lungs. "You have to explain a few things to me before I agree to anything."

"Of course." Michael nodded.

Max uncrossed her arms. She didn't know where to start without sounding stupid. But now, it seemed, she didn't have a choice. Abandoning her pride, she gestured at Michael's wings.

"First off, I want to know what you are. Both of you."

Michael did not hesitate. "I am Michael the Archangel, general of all the armies of Heaven. My brother whom you have locked in your garage is Gabriel, the Messenger of the Father the Almighty, the Left Hand of God."

A choking sensation gripped Max as he spoke. With some difficulty, she managed to swallow it away. Of course, the man in the garage had told her the same thing, but she hadn't believed him at the time. Sure, he had wings and strange armor and carried a forty pound mace, but how could she possibly accept what seemed to be impossible?

Jack had, easily enough. Sometimes, Max wished she had the sensibilities of a child, to understand what could not be understood, to look but not see and still believe.

But then she remembered the medal around her neck, the lucky charm she had carried out of superstition. Was that the same as belief, she wondered. Did she believe in angels?

Michael's preternaturally blue eyes were warm with sympathy. "I understand how challenging this is and I would advise you to put the matter aside in your heart. Either that, or accept it fully. It will be easier for us both to communicate with each other if you do so."

"All right," Max said in a dry voice, although in truth, she did not know if she could ever come to terms with such a thing. This was not just a matter of belief, she realized, but a matter of life and heart and soul. And she couldn't dismiss it, even though she tried her hardest to.

It would always be there, at the back of her mind, in the recesses of thought and emotion. Always. _Always. _

But for now, she couldn't indulge herself. Pulling herself up by her proverbial bootstraps, Max nodded curtly.

"Fine, let's say I accept that you're Michael the Archangel and that he's Gabriel. They're still some other issues I need clarification on."

"Indeed." Michael lowered his chin, his brows raised.

Max squirmed as she felt his gaze hone in on her. She didn't like being watched, or judged, for that matter, by a fellow human, much less an angel. Although she tried to appear collected, she was aware of her heightened sense of shame. There she stood, her hair unwashed and ratty, her uniform wrinkled and stinking of sweat, her soul, her very inner being, just as soiled as her grimy flesh.

A feeling of unworthiness swamped her and she shuffled her feet, hoping to shake it loose and regain what dignity she had left.

It had been easier, she decided, to be in Gabriel's presence. For despite his formidable size and icy, exacting nature, the wounded angel was helpless. Perfectly helpless like she was….

Max cleared her throat, unwilling to give into self-pity just yet. "I want to know," she said, "what's been going on in the cities." Pausing, she watched Michael closely, hoping to gauge his reaction.

But much to her frustration, his face remained impassive.

"I'm not stupid," Max said, plowing ahead even though she felt that she was biting off more than she could chew. "I might play up the whole tough cop persona, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb."

"I know," Michael interjected. Another smile touched the corners of his lips. "You graduated college with honors, excelled in history and literature. This year you had hoped to make detective, and you would have, I think, if you had not been called to a higher purpose." He glanced across the table at Jack.

Max's stomach clenched. "You know a lot about me."

"As I do about all humans who have lived and breathed and walked upon this earth. But that is besides the point, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Max said. Just when she thought her shock was thawing, giving way to much needed rationality, she found herself lost to the mystery of it all once more. This time, however, she managed to keep her train of thought.

"Like I was saying," she continued, "I'm not gonna shut my eyes and pretend like everything's right in the world. It isn't. People are killing each other, going berserk, if you will. Gabriel said something about the weakest willed being the easiest to turn. I'm not exactly sure what he meant, although I think it's an _awfully_ interesting coincidence that two angels show up just when the world's going to shit."

"I am afraid it isn't a coincidence," Michael replied. "I know you were in Los Angeles when it all started. So was I. You saw people turn on each other. You saw the very last of humanity reach its final corruption and die."

Jack stirred in his chair, his normally light expression tightening.

Max felt his worry, his fear, and thought of her nephew's parents…her sister.

_The weakest willed are the easiest to turn_.

"What do you mean," she said, "about humanity dying and all?"

Michael half-rose from his chair, but then seemed to think better of it when Max flinched and instead remained in his seat.

"You have survived the near extermination of your race," he said simply. "None were meant to be left alive, but the future has been rewritten. Faith, at the very least, has been restored."

"Explain," she ground out through a locked jaw.

"Your parents used to take you to church when you were young, Max," Michael said. "You even went to Sunday school. Do you remember what your teacher told you about Noah and the flood?"

"Yeah."

"And when you were a little older, you learned about Sodom and Gomorrah."

"And Lot's wife turned into a pillar of salt, yeah, I get it," Max muttered. Her flippancy, however, was only a pale cover for the very real fear welling up inside her. It was a dark, tainted thing and she wanted to deny it, to stop her ears and shut her eyes like a child. But the world was real and raw. And Max could no longer tend to her selfish needs alone. She had Jack to look after and for him, she had to be brave.

Be brave even if life as she knew it was ending.

"What you're suggesting," she said to Michael, "It's…it's…"The words formed in her mind but she could not say them, _would_ not.

But the angel was still watching her and under his gentle gaze, she felt her courage begin to stir.

"You're talking about the apocalypse here."

"Yes." Michael's expression, which had previously been aloof, was now grave.

Jack made a quiet noise in the back of his throat. Instinctively, Max rested her hand on his shoulder.

"So is this the end?" she asked, surprised at her own ability to vocalize such a horrible thought.

To her immense relief, Michael shook his head. "No. It almost was, but as I said, faith has been restored. You and those that remain have been spared. This time is your's now to rebuild, to restore and to survive, as you have in ages past. Remember the condition of free will."

"Free will," Max echoed. The words tasted stale and bitter. "Is that why you and Gabriel are here, then? To help us survive?"

Inexplicably, the question seemed to stump Michael. He was silent for a long time and Max noticed his eyes lingering on her old medal.

"Yes, I am here to help you," he said at length. "But I can only aid you if you, in turn, care for my brother."

Max squeezed Jack's shoulder reassuringly. The boy was white as milk now, his eyes glassy.

"You're giving us conditions?" she asked. "If I don't agree to take care of your brother, you won't help me?"

"I never said that," Michael said with benign patience. "I understand that my request is not welcome, certainly not at such an uncertain, frightening time-"

"I'm not frightened," Max cut in.

For an instant, she thought the angel might laugh at her.

But Michael remained composed. After a moment, he rose from his chair, keeping his wings folded behind him, the feathers broad and glossy, with just a sinister hint about their sharp, defined edges.

"All the times you prayed to me, Max," he said, reaching across the table to touch his hand to her forearm.

She cringed as his fingers grazed her dirty shirtsleeve. Somehow, it seemed blasphemous.

"All the times you prayed," he repeated, "really prayed. You can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to me. I know that when you sat in your squad car every day you were speaking to me, asking for protection, for help. Now I must ask something of you, Max. Please."

The word was spoken with such utter humility that Max trembled. And yes, she could lie to herself, but she couldn't lie to Michael. All those days she had sat in her squad car, looking at the medal around her neck and praying, praying to get home safe that night, praying for the strength to protect those who couldn't protect themselves, praying that someday she wouldn't have to be a cop anymore and the world would suddenly realize its own evil.

_Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…._

"All right," she said, her lips struggling to frame the words. "I'll look after him."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! Again, if you have a spare moment, please do leave a review. Seriously, I just about go out of my mind with happiness every time I see a review for this fic in my inbox.

In chapter six, Gabriel and Michael will finally have their long-awaited conversation. With any luck, I should have it posted by next week. Until then, take care and be well!


	6. Chapter Six Full Circle

**Author's Note: **Well, here we are again. This was yet another chapter I thought would be under 2,500 words, although the story itself seemed to have very different plans. Haha.

As always, I'd just like to take a minute to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter, **DarkLadyAthara, Alcija w Krainie Czarow, Boundless Hearts, Jade, Gin shoma, moondawntreader, **and **Yes-Man. **In addition, I would like to thank everyone who has read/favorited this story so far. Your support for this fic really means the world to me. I do hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Six Full Circle**

It was not long before Gabriel heard the door to the garage open. Sensing his brother's presence, he deliberately turned his head away and stared at the wall. The sound of Michael's footsteps, however, did not fail to ring against his heart. The noise was subtle, measured, each step slow and steady. Vaguely, Gabriel recalled a line from some moody poem written by a demented human long ago that spoke of _Seraphim whose foot-falls tinkled on the tufted floor_. Of course, there was no such dainty grace to be found in a true angel's footsteps, but rather, something of daunting power.

Gabriel felt an unwelcome chill on the back of his neck as his brother drew closer and he set his jaw. This was the moment that he had been waiting for since Michael had drawn his sword across his stomach. This was the moment he had longed to have, a time when he could look his brother in the eyes and ask him why, why…

Why what?

Why he had failed? No, Gabriel's mind wasn't quite so commonplace. His failure was a matter of pride, and therefore, superfluous.

Perhaps he wanted to know why Michael had spared him? Again, he dismissed the notion as trivial. His brother was naturally merciful, and in his heart of hearts, Gabriel expected nothing less from him.

But maybe, just maybe, he needed to know why Michael had left him behind. Yes. _Yes. _

Gabriel stirred slightly, wondering if he could possibly ask such a question. The answer might be terrible, might be something that he would never forget and find himself haunted by for ages to come.

But was it not worse living in ignorance?

Gabriel did not have time to decide, for Michael was there then, crouching next to him.

"Brother," he said.

And despite himself, Gabriel turned his gaze from the wall and looked at Michael, watched as he laid a hand on his wrist. His palm was rough with calluses.

Gabriel frowned.

"Will you not speak to me?" Michael asked. His temperament, though notably even, seemed a little sharp around the edges, as if something of worry were gnawing at his resolve.

_He is troubled_, Gabriel thought. _We both are._

But still, he held himself aloof. "I would ask the same of you," he replied stiffly.

Michael's fingers fluttered against his wrist. "I do not-"

"You left me here, Michael. You had no mercy for me when I was lying in that gully bleeding to death."

His brother's clear eyes widened, hinting at discomfort. "Gabriel, I-"

"Did you wish to see me humbled?" Gabriel shot back before Michael could respond. "Did you wish to see me become dependent upon the charity of these wretched humans? See me cowed and made lame like some miserable old dog? Take heed," he muttered, rattling his wrist which was still handcuffed to the pipe, "they have me leashed and chained like a mongrel."

"But are these humans so very wretched to you?" Michael asked.

Gabriel knew at once that this was one argument he would not win. For most of his existence, he had been at odds with his brother over the particular case of humans. Michael loved them, sympathized with them, held them in his arms and cradled them as a good angel should. Gabriel, on the other hand, saw humans only as creatures who sinned often, readily, and seemed to enjoy being wicked. They were troublesome, ungrateful and utterly ignorant of the Creator's favor. Spoiled, perhaps. Indulged.

But all that was at an end now and Gabriel could not resist making the fact known to Michael. His brother was wrong, _wrong_ and must recognize his mistake. Must atone for it.

"The boy," he began, knowing that every truly good defense started with a minor concession to one's opponent, "the boy Jack is admirable. There is something of goodness in him. Unsullied goodness. He came back to aid me while I was left stricken in the desert. He risked much to gain so little."

Michael's face brightened at this, as if he believed that his brother was finally coming around. But Gabriel was not finished yet.

Narrowing his eyes, he prepared to drive his point home. "But the woman, that Max, she is typical for her kind. Filthy and grasping and devious. She tried to kill me, Michael. Twice. And I ask you now, are these human so wretched?"

Gabriel knew he was deviating from the heart of the matter, ignoring his brother's betrayal to talk philosophy. And yet, he wished for Michael to feel his frustration, to feel as desperate and alone as he had.

His brother released his wrist at once, and for a moment, Gabriel thought he might actually be vexed. But then Michael shook his head sadly, and reaching forward, lifted the front of the wounded angel's tunic.

"Max is a good woman," he said, inspecting the fine stitching that stretched across his brother's gut, the neat black sutures that held together the flesh he himself had split open. "She saved your life."

"Reluctantly," Gabriel replied, his voice cold. "Goodness comes not from hesitation."

"No. It comes from the heart. From the soul. And Max is not so much of a degenerate as you would think."

"Is that what she told you?" Gabriel asked, his words angry jabs, verbal parries meant to deflect his own pain.

Michael stared at him from underneath heavy, lined brows. "She told me nothing."

"Nothing." Gabriel was uncomfortable with the notion, but he kept his lips folded in a careful frown. "Then you cannot know her intentions."

Michael sighed, his fingers probing at the wound. "She took care of you, brother."

"Only because you would not."

"And here we are, at the very root of things." Michael sat back and looked him in the eyes.

Gabriel turned his face away.

"I weep for the divide between us," Michael continued. As he spoke, Gabriel heard his wings strike the floor, a sign of agitation. Of nervous tension.

It gave him some sense of satisfaction to know that his brother wasn't immune to the deep grief and anger he felt. Their violent quarrel, though seemingly inevitable, brought staggering pain to them both. Being so close to Michael now was a trial in and of itself. Gabriel's mood fluctuated wildly between rage and loneliness. At times, he wished to embrace his brother and forgive him his faults. But pride held him back. Pride and righteous fury. Michael needed to understand, he needed to feel the deep, gnawing agony that tormented Gabriel, the confusion and the regret and yes, even the fear.

The terrible, terrible fear.

Although Gabriel had been angry with Michael in the past, his rage this time was frightening. Their relationship, though loyal and strong and respectful, had always been an awkward thing. Michael was the undeniable favorite, the Father's jewel, the one who could disobey and still be rewarded.

Because somehow, Michael was always right. Always right no matter the outcome. No matter the consequences. Gabriel himself had never been that fortunate.

And even though he liked to believe that he was made of stone, a small crack of envy had scarred Gabriel's heart and he nursed it through the centuries, watching as Michael changed and grew into someone he could not comprehend, as he became an alien creature whom Gabriel feared he no longer knew.

And a week ago, the final fracture happened. His mighty heart had shattered with the news that Michael had once more disobeyed the Father, and, in doing so, would force Gabriel himself to deliver his rightful punishment.

The trial had been worse than he had expected. It would have been far easier for Gabriel to cut off his own limbs, or to throw himself down from the heavens than to hurt Michael.

But he had hurt him. He had. And now they sat in some damp, drafty garage, entirely apart. Estranged. Divided.

Were they doomed to be sundered forever, he wondered. Was this the end of their brotherly devotion?

"Why did you leave me?" Gabriel asked, unable to withhold the question any longer.

"You know that this is not a matter of black and white," Michael said. There was something of measured patience in his tone. Of acceptance and forbearance.

It irritated Gabriel and soon, he felt the familiar desire to remind his brother of his failings.

For it had been Michael who had disobeyed the Father. Michael who rebelled.

And it was Michael, his equal in all matters, the angel who had stood with him through the ages, who had turned his back on all that mattered and walked away. Simply walked away.

"Do you realize what you have done?" Gabriel asked.

Michael studied his hands, his long fingers resting on his thighs, his tattooed knuckles blanched white. "I realize that we were both wrong."

This was new. Unexpected. Gabriel had not thought Michael would readily admit to his own wrongdoing, not after his display of arrogance on the mountaintop, after he had informed him, coldly, bitterly, that _he_ had not failed the Father.

Only Gabriel. _Only Gabriel_.

"But when you defeated me," he said, his breath coming in sharp spurts, "but when you saw me lying in the dust and you had your sword at my throat, you could only gloat."

"I did not-"

"Arrogance, Michael!" Gabriel sat forward abruptly, causing the stitches in his stomach to stretch and pinch his tender flesh. "You were arrogant."

His brother was silent for a long time, and Gabriel began to wonder if he had succeeded in lowering Michael, in wrenching him down from his seat of lofty triumph into the dark depths of despair and uncertainty.

But did he want to see his brother fall? Was there nothing of unconditional love left in him? Should he not be the one to forgive, blindly, eagerly, in spite of Michael's abandonment?

Words of pardon pressed against Gabriel's lips. He struggled with them, tasting both their bitterness and their sweetness.

They had the chance to put this all behind them. They had the chance…if Gabriel could only let go.

If he could only forget.

And yet then the sutures dug into his skin, pulled at him, pained him. And Gabriel remembered the look in Michael's eyes on that mountaintop.

Pity, his brother had pitied him.

Gabriel was about to succumb to fresh rage once more when Michael finally spoke.

"I was arrogant," he said, his whole body tensing, his wings quivering. "It was wrong of me to mock your failure."

Gabriel surprised himself when he said, "You did not mock me."

"But I was wrong. And I beg your forgiveness, brother."

Relief trickled in to cool Gabriel's boiling stream of anger. In his chest, the knot of worry began to unravel and slowly, his heart pieced itself back together.

Was it enough for Michael to acknowledge his own sins? Perhaps. His brother _did_ appear humbled, his glory, his incessant majesty somewhat dimmed and repressed.

And he sat slumped on the floor next to the wounded angel, his head bowed in humility. The trickle of relief within Gabriel turned into a flood, embracing his body, baptizing it until he was born anew.

"I forgive you," he said, "but only for your arrogance. You may think me harsh, brother. You may think me unbending and unkind, but I still smart from your betrayal. You left me behind…why?"

"Yes," Michael said and then fell silent once more.

Gabriel was provoked by his brother's newfound reticence. In the past, they had never hid anything from each other, had always been open and truthful. But their honesty had been violated and in its place there existed doubt. Unspoken thoughts and muted gestures and reluctance.

He realized then that no, it was not enough for Michael to admit his sins. The flood had just begun, the earth was not yet cleansed. They were standing in water up to their necks but not yet drowning.

And to survive, they would both have to go under.

Gabriel took a deep breath, knowing that he would be the one to voice his fears, to open the matter to Michael and in doing so, lay bare his soul.

"Were you ordered to leave me behind?" he asked.

"Yes."

It was not the answer he had wanted to hear. Gabriel's stomach lurched, filling with shards of ice that made his body go numb.

"Then I am being punished," he said, his jaw locking as he struggled to speak. "The Father is angry with me."

"No!" Michael raised his hand, as if he could push Gabriel's words away, as if he could pacify an already shattered soul with a simple, submissive gesture. "No, my brother. Do no even think of such a thing."

"As I recall," Gabriel said coldly, "you told me that I had failed Him. And those that fail, those that strive and yet never reach their end, are not looked upon kindly. Tolerance is something you may espouse, Michael, but it is not reality."

His brother shifted, moving from a passive position on the floor besides Gabriel to a more active one. He crouched before the wounded angel and his body was poised. Alert. The great, dark shadows of his wings spread out elegantly behind him.

"I will say it again, this is not a definite, solid matter. Your mind is too decisive. You must understand the unknown," he said.

Gabriel was growing tired of Michael's philosophy. He did not wish to be schooled in logic and semantics in so patronizing a fashion. Unable to control his frustration, he slammed his fist onto the concrete floor. A tiny fracture appeared in the cement and Gabriel saw Michael's eyes widen slightly at the sight of it.

_Perhaps he thinks I can still best him_, he thought wryly, but then dismissed the notion as arrogant and unnecessary.

"I will try to be more open-minded," Gabriel said, his tone edged with sarcasm, "but tell me now, brother, why were you ordered to leave me behind?"

"I do not know." The honesty etched across Michael's face was as visible as any physical feature. His brother's expression was open and vulnerable, not closed and defensive.

Gabriel felt the air rush out of his lungs in a sigh. "There was no reason to it, then? There was no sense behind my suffering? No greater purpose?"

That would be worse, he realized. To be left behind for no reason. To have his suffering rendered meaningless.

Again, Michael raised his hand, though Gabriel noticed that the tips of his fingers had begun to tremble. "Yes, there is a greater purpose. I was told, simply, that you were needed still. I assumed that you had your own orders, brother. I did not know that you too had been left in the dark."

Uncertainty was not usually comforting, but Gabriel took Michael's brevity for what it was. They were both in the same position, after all.

"You do not know," he repeated, as if daring his brother to contradict him.

Michael shook his head. "I swear to you, I do not. And I tell you now, Gabriel, how greatly I was pained to leave you behind. I have not been settled these past three days, although I admit I did find some measure of comfort when I observed the kind ministrations and charity of these humans here. But I am wounded anew. Brother, how could you believe that I would deceive you? That I would obscure the truth and leave you blind?"

"I-" Gabriel began, but could not finish. His teeth closed over his tongue.

For the first time in ages, Michael seemed overwhelmed. He sat with his wings drawn up around his shoulders, the line of his neck rigid and tense. Gabriel longed to offer some words of comfort to him, but could find none.

His heart was empty. His mind was blank.

And he realized, that even now, things would not be entirely settled between them. Apologies offered freely could not soothe deep wounds, could not mend long broken hearts and tormented spirits. They would need time and perhaps, yes, perhaps, they would need distance.

As always, Michael sensed his brother's thoughts, his very private doubts.

"I come to tell you the truth as I know it," he said softly, his face no longer impassive but alive with suppressed emotion. "He wishes you to remain here, Gabriel. I do not know for how long. I do not know why. I am to come to you often. And I will come, brother. I will."

Gabriel said nothing. He felt a sense of helplessness close over him as Michael spoke and the emotion was so foreign that he tried to reject it altogether. Never before had he experienced the cold, consistent touch of vulnerability. It was an ugly thing, completely at odds with his own inherent power and independence. But now, yes now, he was weak.

_Weak._

Perhaps, he thought, his brother had felt the same way. Perhaps he had been just as helpless, just as _hopeless_ when he severed his wings from his body and left Heaven to fight a war that was not his own.

Gabriel's eyes began to burn. He swallowed, fighting the choking sensation in the back of his throat. He was suffocating, drowning…

"Full circle," he said quietly.

Michael looked up at him. "What do you say, brother?"

"Full circle," Gabriel repeated, his voice stronger now. Certain. "We have come full circle."

Michael did not question him, and for that, Gabriel was truly grateful.

The two angels sat in meditative silence for a few minutes, enjoying the fresh, if not uneasy sense of peace that filled the garage. But the moment was only a moment, a brief, unnoticed space of time that quickly slipped away into nothingness.

Michael stood, his wings unfolding and he looked to the house.

As if summoned, Max stepped inside the garage, her hands jammed into her pockets.

"Is…uh, is everything all right here?" she asked in a surprisingly small voice.

Michael looked once more at Gabriel, holding his gaze for only an instant before directing his attention to the woman. "You took very good care of my brother. The stitches you gave him are neat and even. There will be very little scarring."

Max shrugged awkwardly. "You're welcome."

"He shall not need any further medical treatment. Only rest," Michael continued, speaking, again, as if Gabriel was not there. "Although, I daresay this garage is rather drafty and the concrete floor must be uncomfortable."

"Yeah, yeah." Max tossed her hair out of her eyes. "I gotcha ya."

Michael was all business now. He stepped forward and placed a steadying hand on Max's shoulder.

The human recoiled.

"I thank you for your help," he said and touched his other hand to his chest, "from the very bottom of my heart. Stay safe and take care. I will return in a few days."

And with exquisite grace, Michael turned to the open garage door, his wings already spreading, the feathers embracing the strong currents of wind that rose out of the night air to lift him back into the heavens.

But Gabriel did not want to see him leave again. Did not want to be left alone. Abandoned.

"Brother," he called, his strength ceding to weakness for the first time in ages.

Michael paused, his torso, his entire body extended forward in the act of pitching himself into the sky. He looked once over his shoulder and in his eyes, there were tears.

And Gabriel realized that the pain Michael felt was his own and that the great divide between them had been bridged. Tentatively. Cautiously.

The flood waters were receding.

It was enough to sustain Gabriel, and he nodded, giving Michael his own private blessing. With a great slap of his wings and much buffeting of air, his brother rose into the night. Rose into the night and disappeared.

There was silence then. Stillness returned and blanketed the tiny house. Out in the desert, the world had fallen mute. No lone howl of a coyote ruptured the quiet. No rustling of shrubs. No beating of wings.

It was a long time before Max stepped forward, her shoes making an obnoxious scraping sound of the floor. Instinctively, Gabriel felt his anger rise and he wanted to strike out against her, vent his frustration and despair in blind, meaningless violence. But then he saw the woman's face, saw the tired bruises under her eyes and the lines across her forehead and the blisters on her cracked, bitten lips.

"Hey," she said, managing to hold the archangel's gaze for the first time, "do you wanna come inside?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **Hmm, this was a rather angsty chapter, I think. But then again, I suppose this whole story is rather angsty.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review, even if it's just a couple of words. I thrive on the feedback you guys give me.

In chapter seven, Gabriel finally begins to adjust to the company of his new human friends, and consequently, finds out what exactly happened to Jack's parents. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly7-10 days. I hope you all have a pleasant week!

*The line "_Seraphim whose footfalls tinkled on the tufted floor…" _comes from "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe.


	7. Chapter Seven Rivalry

**Author's Note: **Welcome to chapter seven. Thanks for taking the time to stop by. I actually have a confession to make. This is not, in fact, the original version of this chapter. My first, unedited version included lengthy flashbacks of Max's time in L.A. and her rescue of Jack. It also tipped the scales at 8,000 words, so after much revising and rewriting, I decided to divide this single chapter into two parts. Chapter Eight, therefore, will be more of an extension of chapter seven as opposed to a separate installment. And since I have most of chapter eight complete already, another update should be imminent.

Once more, I'd just like to thank everyone who took the time to read the last chapter, along with those that reviewed , **BoundlessHearts, Jade, Yes-Man, moondawntreader **and** Helen. **In addition, I'd like to extend my most sincere thanks to everyone who has added this story their favorites/author's alerts list. Thank you all! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Seven Rivalry **

Living with the humans, Gabriel realized, was decidedly more comfortable than he could have ever hoped it to be. Of course, his mood itself was vastly improved once Max removed his handcuffs and freed him from his humiliating captivity in the garage. Although his legs were weak and he had to be helped from his former lodgings into the house by both Max and Jack, Gabriel felt some sense of his old power returning. His majesty, his dignity, while markedly reduced, were not yet vanquished. With each passing moment, with each cycle of the sun and moon, Gabriel strengthened.

And even though he was loathe to admit it, the care provided by his human hosts aided in his recovery. Once inside, Gabriel was properly established in the living room, a space that was just about as dusty as the garage, but boasted two large bay windows that looked out over the property around the house and hinted at the ash-colored mountains in the distance.

Max had positioned the archangel on the sofa, propping up several pillows behind him so that he could remain sitting and take advantage of the expansive vista. For this, Gabriel was appreciative. The touch of the sun on his face, the glitter of the stars and the sight of birds wheeling in the heavens enlivened him. And although he enjoyed the scenery, he was also comforted to have a suitable view of the surrounding land in case any hostile presence, demonic or angelic or earthly, should intrude upon the tiny house.

The warrior in him, after all, was very much alive.

It troubled him, of course, that he was still without his armor and weapons. He had not seen any sign of his armaments since Max had dragged him from the gully to her garage. Gabriel decided that he had best broach the subject of their whereabouts as soon as possible, although he was certain the matter would not sit comfortably with Max. There was something of paranoia about the woman. He supposed her mistrust was justified, even though it was not very convenient for him. And mentioning the subject now might spur on her otherwise subdued hostility.

Gabriel knew he was not tactful when it came to humans. He would have to be polite and open. Respectful, even. The mere thought left a sour taste in his mouth, but he was still determined. After much consideration, he finally found a suitable opportunity to give voice to the matter on his first morning inside the house.

Max was standing in the kitchen, an open room that adjoined the living room. Gabriel's back was to her, but he heard her bare feet padding around on the sticky linoleum floor. She was fussing with a ceramic mug and some cutlery. The smell of instant coffee followed shortly after.

"Are you sure you don't want anything?" Max asked him. Her voice was tired.

Gabriel wondered if she was sleeping well.

"No," he replied. "I have no need for nourishment."

"Whatever. I just don't want your brother to barge in here again like he did last night and tell me that I'm neglecting you. No trouble, right?"

"No trouble," Gabriel echoed. He heard her approaching from behind.

Max entered the living room, her feet gliding over the old shag carpet. She was wearing a pair of flannel pajama pants and a wrinkled undershirt. It was the first time Gabriel had seen her out of her police uniform. Her hair, he noticed, was wet, slicked back from her high forehead.

She had obviously found the time to wash.

Setting her mug of coffee down on top of a squat bookshelf, she sat in the rocking chair across from the sofa.

Silence followed. Max seemed to be waiting for him to say something.

But Gabriel was not his brother. He saw no need to engage the human, to comfort her insecurities and her fears with soft, useless reassurances.

And up until that moment, he had thought Max was of like mind. Comfortable with the quiet between them. Satisfied to have silence instead of empty words. But then she stirred in her rocking chair, her chapped lips pressed together, her temples slick and moist with water.

"Do you have any idea how much I hate this house?" she asked.

Gabriel was surprised when she spoke to him and he lifted a brow. "Jack told me this house belonged to his grandmother," he said, keeping his features straight and neutral. "It seems quite old."

And indeed, the house was in a state of disrepair. The walls were yellowed and in need of a fresh coat of paint. Much of the furniture stank of mold. The sofa Gabriel was sitting on had several sharp springs poking up from underneath the cushions. He shifted and tried to avoid them, but only ended up puncturing the already threadbare upholstery with his razor-edged feathers.

"It was his great-grandmother's," Max replied. She took a sip of her coffee. "She was my mom's mom. My grandma. What a crazy old lady. She grew up in New York City. Worked for the post office. I guess you could say I got my civil service gene from her. When she was forty, she moved her whole family upstate. Wanted to have a farm but didn't have the money. And then when she finally retired, she left her kids and grandkids in New York and came all the way out here to breed horses. Things didn't go too well. She was a terrible businesswoman. My sister and I used to spend our summers out here, mucking stalls and all that country stuff. I always hated it."

Gabriel said nothing for a moment. He did not want to encourage her newfound interest in his company, but he also realized that his life under her roof could be unpleasant if he was not at least tolerant.

"Why did you bring Jack here?" he asked, although he was not overly curious as to what the woman might say.

She was a dull-minded creature. Unimaginative. Blockheaded and unnecessarily stubborn. He did not know what promise Michael saw in her….

"I thought this place would be safe," she said, her tone the equivalent of a verbal shrug. "It's secluded enough and I _had _hoped no one would bother us." Her expression was accusatory.

Gabriel said nothing. This was not charity, he decided. Max obviously begrudged his presence. Fresh frustration bloomed in his chest. He had no inkling as to why the Father wished him to remain with these humans. Perhaps Michael was wrong. Perhaps he _was_ being punished.

But then Jack came into the room, his face bright and cheery and smiling.

"Good morning!" he called. "Hi, Gabriel. Nice to see you in the house."

The angel's frustration dulled and he tried to push his worries away, tried to lock them back safely in his heart where they belonged.

_Never mind Max_, he thought. _The boy is the true saint in this house._

"Good morning," Gabriel replied in turn, attempting to soften the hard edge in his voice. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what to say. He was not, after all, in the habit of making conversation with humans.

"I trust you slept well," he said at last.

Jack dropped down onto the leather loveseat in front of the bay windows. "Kind of. I was too wound up after Michael left. It took me forever to drift off. Max, did you sleep?" He glanced at his aunt. "You really need to, you know. My science teacher said that-"

"I know." Max finished her coffee in a gulp and grimaced. "I'll go crazy if I don't get a solid eight hours. God, kid, I don't know what they teach you in your middle school. I've worked the nightshift at my precinct for five years and I'm fine."

"Well, I don't know about that, right Gabriel?" Jack laughed. He looked at the angel, trying to get him to share the joke.

Gabriel found a small smile for the boy, but otherwise kept his mouth shut. He had no intention of going to war with Max just yet.

Surprisingly, Max had the grace to ignore her nephew's tiny jab. "Listen, kiddo," she said. "I want you to get dressed. We're going out to look for stuff again, okay? I want to get this done with before late afternoon."

"Sure." Jack stood. "Do you think we have enough gas left in your squad car to get anywhere, though?"

"You let me worry about that," Max replied. "I've got everything under control."

Jack didn't argue with her. Instead, he trudged out of the living room.

Gabriel waited until he had heard a door down the hall close before he looked to Max.

"Where are you taking the boy?" he asked. It was his turn to be accusatory now.

Max rolled her empty mug between her hands, her head turned towards the windows. "We're just going to do some scavenging. I need supplies, you know. Food. Water. Batteries. Candles in case the electrical grid goes down and we lose power. And I'd like to find some ammo. I only have a couple of mags left for my handgun. If this is the end of the world or some huge disaster or whatever your brother said it was, then we need to be prepared. God knows how long we'll have to hole up here."

Her concerns were trivial to Gabriel who had no need for food or supplies himself. And yet, he began to realize just how perilous her position was. The humans had had no warning of the attack on their species. They had been scattered. Nearly brought to ruin. Survival was now the order of the day and Max and Jack would need help if they were going to thrive once more.

Gabriel glanced out the window, feeling something of concern hearken within him. Something of care and understanding.

"How much food do you have left?" he asked.

Max did not answer right away. She seemed to be thinking. "I grabbed what I could out of the fridge at my sister's apartment," she said at last. "And when we were on our way out here, I stopped at a deserted supermarket and got a cartful of canned goods. I've been rationing our meals, but still…we'll probably be out in two weeks."

"And your medical supplies?" Gabriel pressed. He was suddenly aware of the stitches holding his stomach together.

"Fresh out," Max said wryly.

"And you only have the one weapon?"

"Err…I have my handgun, taser and asp. There's some mace in the squad car, I think. A flare gun too."

Gabriel shut his eyes. They would need help, he realized. Help he couldn't yet provide. He was too weak to fetch supplies for them and by the time he recovered, they might very well be out of food. There was, however, something he could do for them. Something small, but not insignificant.

"Do not take the boy with you," he said, turning his head to glance at Max.

She was perched on the edge of the rocking chair now, her mug still fastened between her hands. "What?"

"Do not take Jack with you when you search for food. It is too dangerous. The boy might get hurt…or worse. Let him stay in the house with me and I will watch over him."

Max let out a laugh that almost sounded like a sigh. "Yeah, right."

For an instant, Gabriel was insulted. But then he reminded himself to be calm and to accept Max's insecurity for what it was; the instinctive reaction of a dumb animal.

"I can protect the boy," he said. "You have my armor and arms. Give them back to me and I will protect you both."

Max was really laughing at him now. She sat back in the chair, rocking it slightly. "Oh, so I'm just gonna hand over your weapons like it's no big deal and leave you alone with my nephew. You've gotta be fucking kidding me. Really? Come on, don't embarrass yourself. I'd rather you just ask for your things back rather than insult my intelligence."

She was talking to him as if addressing a common criminal, as if he were one of the perps she dragged into the drunk tank on a Friday night.

Gabriel bristled at her sarcasm. His face became stony and he stared at her, pouring every ounce of his umbrage into his penetrating gaze. For a brief instant, he felt his control, his command over his emotions begin to slip. It was as though he were back on the mountaintop with Michael, seeing his brother restored to glory, knowing that he had failed and wanting, wanting so terribly to avenge his own wounded pride.

"You are a fool, human," he said, the words pushing past his lips, punctuated by a low growl. "I offer you my aid and yet you scorn my help. How many times was it you prayed to my brother Michael for his intercession, for his protection? You have it now, and still, you blindly reject it. It is no wonder the Father chose to destroy your kind. I would that the great task had been finished."

Max flinched as he spoke and as he watched her cringe, Gabriel almost regretted his words. He was being harsh, yes, but his temper was necessary. This woman, this daughter of sin and filth had degraded him for far too long. And now he found his first act of mercy, his very real desire to help, so blatantly dismissed.

Something deeper and more powerful than Gabriel's pride had been wounded, but he failed to acknowledge it.

Only a weakling would rise to her insults. They were dull barbs. Insignificant. Pathetic. With no little difficulty, he drove back his anger and sought renewed reason.

_Never mind the woman_, he thought once more, adopting the phrase as a soothing mantra. _Help the boy. Help the child. _

And as much as he hated to, he offered the olive branch one final time. One final time for Michael's sake and for Jack's.

"Max," he said, his jaw still tight with anger. "I tell you now, leave the boy with me."

But the woman was furious with him. Hurt by his reproof, she retreated to lick her wounds.

"Stay out of this," she said, her voice shaking as she pushed herself up out of the rocking chair. "We just want to be left alone."

Gabriel heard her move down the hall, her fist banging on the door.

"Jack, are you ready?" she hollered.

Gabriel lowered his eyes and stared at his hands.

He had tried to help….

_Brother_, he thought, sending a prayer up to Michael, who he knew watched over them all, _I tried. _

And failed.

* * *

Although Gabriel _hated_ to admit it, he did find himself growing worried when Max and Jack did not return before nightfall. He spent the entire day on the sofa in the dusty living room, watching the sun track its way over the valley beyond until it began to set between the peaks of the distant mountains.

As the hours closed towards nightfall, he found himself listening hard for the tell-tale signs of the approaching squad car, the hum of the engine, the crunch of its tires on the gravel in the driveway.

It never came.

Shadows stretched across the living room. The house was dark and quiet and still like a sepulcher, and Gabriel was the marble angel perched atop the tomb, his expression eternally stoic.

But his heart was in turmoil.

He hoped that Jack would know enough to return to the house if something happened to his aunt. He hoped the boy would be smart and leave her behind if he needed to save himself.

And yet, he knew Jack was self-sacrificing. Loving. Kind. And he could picture the boy standing by Max as they were cornered by enemies, earthly or otherworldly. He could see the child trying to protect her and getting injured, getting knocked to the ground or trampled or beaten or stabbed…

Gabriel closed his eyes, surprised at the pain that flashed through his heart. He had not cared when the human girl-was her name Audrey?-had been ejected from the car with him, had had her body crushed between his and the blacktop.

Why should he feel any differently towards Jack? Towards Max, even? They were the same as Audrey. Creatures of flesh and bone and blood and sin. And had he not, a mere six hours ago, wished the entire human race extinct?

He had and now he regretted it.

Alone in the house, alone in the dark and silence, Gabriel began to consider his options. Was he still too weak to fly? Yes. His strength had not been tested in days and he remembered the night before, when he had been forced to lean on Jack and Max's shoulders as they helped him in from the garage.

He couldn't go out and search for them. He was not even sure he could lift himself off the sofa. But Michael, yes, Michael could. Michael who was watching over him.

He needed his brother now, he realized, and for a moment, he forgot the distance between them, the upset and anger.

He needed his brother, he needed…

Two bright lights flooded the living room. Headlights. Gabriel blinked and watched as the squad car with the dent in its driver's side door rumbled up the driveway and disappeared into the garage. A moment later, he heard the door to the house open. The soles of Jack's sneakers squealed as they hit the linoleum kitchen floor.

"Hey, Gabriel!" he panted, lugging a cardboard box onto the table. "We're home."

And the archangel let out a sigh of relief and found a ready smile for the boy.

"You were gone for some time," he said. His voice was unusually light. Welcoming.

Max came into the house then, her arms weighted down by two propane tanks. She looked at him and he saw in her eyes the echo of the argument they had had earlier in the day.

"Yeah, we're back," she said sourly. "Disappointed?"

* * *

Max and Jack had been lucky in their scavenging. As his aunt prepared dinner, Jack showed each of his new treasures to Gabriel.

"Three lanterns," he said, pulling them out of the box and lining them up neatly in front of the rocking chair. "They're just like the one's my parents bought when we went camping. And Max found the propane, so we'll be able to use the stove a little longer. Oh and candles. There were loads of candles."

"Not enough matches, though," Max grumbled from the kitchen. She was emptying a can of tomato soup into a saucepan. The liquid hit the metal with an unappetizing plop. "I wanna find some matches just in case."

Jack rolled his eyes and offered Gabriel a conspiratorial smile. "I guess I should've joined the Boy Scouts, right? Those guys can start a fire with two rocks."

"It's called flint," Max corrected.

Jack ignored her.

The humans ate their dinner in the kitchen to the accompaniment of music. Max had turned the living room stereo on at the beginning of the meal. Gabriel did not recognize the music, which Jack told him was called _Creedance Clearwater Revival_. Nonetheless, the steady twang of guitars and raspy vocals effectively dispelled the lethargy that seemed to cling to the old house.

Gabriel surprised himself when he shifted his position on the sofa so that he had his back to the windows and his eyes to the humans. For some strange reason, it gave him comfort to watch them eat, although Max apparently viewed him as a begging dog for all the annoyed looks she gave him.

After dinner, Jack helped Max with the dishes and then they settled down in the living room, arranging themselves awkwardly around Gabriel.

For the next hour or so they entertained themselves with a deck of cards and played several games Gabriel himself was excluded from. Jack, however, made it a point to engage the archangel in conversation and he talked to him about everything, from what it was like to be able to fly to the gym teacher at his school that he hated.

Gabriel let the boy prattle on, supplying brief answers when necessary and showing attentiveness the rest of the time.

Max, predictably, said nothing.

At about half-past ten, the woman stood, collected the deck of cards and looked towards the darkened hallway beyond the living room.

"C'mon bud," she said. "Time for bed."

Gabriel expected Jack to argue with his aunt, but the boy acquiesced.

"If you say so, officer," he said. "Maybe this time I can get some shut eye before another angel comes bashing through the garage door, huh Gabriel?" And then he laughed.

Max frowned. "Don't even talk about that," she muttered, waiting until her nephew had risen from the loveseat before she escorted him out of the living room and down the hall. "I don't want you getting involved in this."

Gabriel heard Jack pause by his bedroom door. As always, the boy seemed to have the last word.

"Yeah, but they _are_ angels, Max," he said. "You know they are."

"Good night," Max replied firmly. A door clicked closed.

And once more, Gabriel found himself alone with the woman. A small part of him hoped that she too would retire to bed, but then she came back into the living room, dropped into the rocking chair and stared at him.

He stared back.

She was wearing her policewoman's uniform once more, having changed out of her ratty sleeping clothes before leaving the house that morning. Strangely enough, the plain black pants and button-down shirt with the shield pinned to its breast did not render her intimidating or even authoritative. If anything, she looked all the more vulnerable, a poor, pitiful creature clutching the last vestiges of her former life.

Gabriel didn't have the heart to tell her that she wasn't a police officer anymore and that she would never be a police officer again. He was honest, but not cruel. Seeing Max cling to her uniform and to her badge and to all the things that made her who she was rendered her pathetic. And even he could not destroy her last hope, as much as he was disgusted by her irreverent behavior.

Max seemed to sense all this. She was, if nothing else, a keenly perceptive human.

"Are you still angry with me?" she asked. In the dull light coming from the kitchen she looked small and wasted and haunted. Her eyes were fever-bright.

_Death warmed over_, Gabriel thought. He raised a brow. "I am neither angry nor troubled."

"Yeah, well, you seemed pretty pissed off this morning."

"You rejected my offer of help. That was unwise."

"Humph." Max sat back in the chair and the wooden frame emitted a faint creak. "Are you going to tell your brother on me? Am I not cooperating sufficiently enough?"

Gabriel picked up on her sarcasm, but chose to ignore it. "I will say nothing more on the matter," he replied. "No trouble."

This amused Max. A rare smile lifted her lips. She ran a hand over her face, pulling the flesh of her cheeks taut, and sighed. "Look, I'll admit that I kinda jumped down your throat this morning. I'm sorry. But you've got to understand…that kid in there…that kid is the only one I have left. I mean, I'm not married, I don't have any children of my own. My parents are dead. Jack, he's something special. Always has been. I love that boy to death and that night…that night in L.A., all I could think of was…"

She stopped abruptly as if her tongue had been seized by a palsy. Cold fear, pure and fresh, drained the animated flush from her cheeks. Max twisted her hands together.

Gabriel watched her, his senses attuned. There was something in her reaction, he noted. Yes, something important. Once more, he remembered what his brother had told him.

_Wait and watch._

Perhaps now was the time.

"You need not defend your actions," he said calmly.

Max's face tightened. "I'm not…I'm…I'm just trying to make you understand."

"I understand more than you would think," Gabriel replied. He hoped that if he was open enough, if he was considerate and tolerant, she might realize that he meant no harm. After all, it had not taken her long to trust Michael.

But why should it matter if she trusted him or not? It was a superfluous notion. By all rights, Gabriel should not even care if the human grew to like him, let alone trust him.

He did care, however. He did.

The thought burrowed in his mind, an uncomfortable, uneasy thing that nipped at his self-awareness. He was becoming too human, he decided. Being amongst their kind had warped his sense of balance and his own position in the world. There was a natural order that all things followed, even angels, and now, Gabriel felt disturbed. He was no longer in his rightful place, but somehow outside of it. Beyond existence. Lost.

And somehow, he knew that Max felt the same way.

The thought should have disgusted him, but it didn't. He wondered if this was what his brother felt towards humans. If this unnatural connection between two separate souls, between two separate beings, was what drove him to abandon Heaven for the uncertainty of Earth a week ago.

And yet, Michael had a way with humans that Gabriel did not. For the first time in his life, he began to feel frustrated by his own limitations. His face grew hot and keen regret darkened his mood. Once more, Michael had bested him….

"Can I ask you something?" Max's sharp voice punctured his musings.

Gabriel nodded, giving her leave to proceed even though it was unnecessary. The woman was a grasping creature. What she was not given she stole. Gabriel did not know if he dared to admire her cunning, although her determination was certainly something to marvel at.

"Go on," he said, his tone husky. "Ask what you will."

He heard the rocking chair squeak and looked towards his companion. Max was sitting forward, her hands braced on the arms.

"You and your brother Michael," she said, "you two don't exactly get along, do you?"

Such perception! Her intuition stung Gabriel and his lips pinched in a grimace.

"Huh," Max grunted. "I seem to have a talent for making you mad."

"I am not angry."

"Not to be antagonistic, but yeah, you are. I'm a cop. I can tell when people are scared or upset or so pissed off that they want to rip someone's head off."

"Such base reactions," Gabriel muttered, "might be commonplace amongst humans. As for my kind, we hold ourselves aloof. You assume much through your interpretation."

"All right." Max shrugged her narrow shoulders. "I take back what I said. You're not angry. But still, you haven't answered my question. My nephew's been chewing your ear off for the past few days and you tell him all sorts of stuff. Can't you give me a little break too?"

An indistinct, noncommittal noise rose up in the back of Gabriel's throat. His nostrils flared slightly and he tried to take a deep breath. The wound to his stomach was less painful now, he realized, although the hole in his shoulder still smarted.

And it had been Max, after all, who had tended to his injuries. Max who had used up the last of her medical supplies to help a creature she was terrified of.

Gabriel sighed. Yes, perhaps he ought to give her a little break.

"You are correct," he said at length. "My brother and I do not see eye to eye. We love each other, yes, but…" He trailed off, unwilling, unable, to go further.

Max, however, accepted his explanation for what it was. "I understand," she said, and then added, "I understand more than you think."

Gabriel's lips twitched as he listened to her echoing his previous sentiments. Sometimes, on rare occasions, she was very much like her nephew.

"It was the same for Laurie and me," Max said and Gabriel noticed that she fumbled over her sister's name, a slight hitch affecting her otherwise even tone. "Laurie was older than me, but God, we loved each other like crazy. When I was a kid, and even when I was an adult, I always…"

"Envied her?" Gabriel supplied.

Max nodded. "Yeah, pretty much. Laurie was much more of a social person. Very extroverted. She had lots of friends in high school and a boyfriend. Shit, she was always lucky with guys. Always lucky. That really drove me crazy. I mean, it's one thing to see your sister dating someone, but when no one even looks your way or tries to flirt with you…" She stopped abruptly and cleared her throat.

Another hitch. More hesitation.

Gabriel's eyes narrowed. There was something here as well. Something deep and strong. A steady, devastating current. So much self-doubt…and yes, loneliness. Violent, unrepentant loneliness

A ripple of agitation coursed through Gabriel. He tried to suppress it, but a shudder rose along the spine, tingling in the space between his wings.

Max, however, did not seem to notice his momentary lapse.

"But I'm getting off track here," she said and her tone was breathless. "Laurie, she was a really great kid. Sweet, like Jack, I guess. Just effortlessly kind. I was never as outgoing as her. In high school, I sort of let her do her own thing. It was easier that way. But in the end, it all worked out well. We both got great grades. We both made our parents happy."

Gabriel noticed a note of pride infecting her tone. Her face had become lighter.

"We went to the same college," Max continued. "Laurie chose the school, all the way out in California because she wanted to be closer to our Grandmother and wanted to live independently, like an adult, away from our parents. I don't know, I would've been happy to stay in New York, but I followed Laurie out to L.A. after I finished high school. She graduated first and went to law school and I…" Again, Max paused.

Gabriel said nothing.

"Like I said before," Max muttered. The light had gone out of her eyes. "I signed up with the police force right out of college. I probably should have gone on to graduate school, but…but I'm not Laurie. I just couldn't….It's not so bad being a cop, though, right? Right?"

"No," Gabriel replied and for some reason, he wanted to allay her insecurities, the insecurities that were, in fact, his own. "It is not so bad."

Surprisingly, his words seemed to soothe Max. Her muscles loosened and she sat back in her chair, her arms limp and lax.

"I guess I was always a bit jealous of Laurie," she said and her gaze turned inward, away from Gabriel, away from the world. "Sibling rivalry, eh?"

"Rivalry." The word sat easily upon Gabriel's lips. He accepted it for what it was. A realization. An recognition. Inexpiably, Max had helped him to understand. Perhaps he had never admitted to himself that Michael was indeed his rival, had been his rival for ages and would, perhaps continue to be…

"But there's nothing wrong with that," Max whispered after a time. "Nothing wrong with that at all."

_Yes,_ Gabriel thought, but said nothing. And together, they sat in silence.

Roughly an hour later, Max began to drift off to sleep in the rocking chair.

Gabriel himself remained on the sofa, his hands folded across his stomach, his wings draped behind him, the joints relaxed.

He watched as she first removed her shoes and reached behind her to pull the old crocheted afghan around her shoulders. And then, shortly after, Max tucked her feet under her, the tense line of her body softening. Only the light in the kitchen remained on and it cast indistinct shadows across the living carpet. The harsh planes of her face became gentle.

Gabriel turned his gaze from her and looked out the bay windows at the stars. The mountains in the distance were ringed with traces of thin clouds. The moon had reached its zenith in the sky.

He imagined his brother gazing upon the same moon and for a moment, he felt their silent vigils merge.

But then the clouds thickened and covered the moon and spat rain. Gabriel drew his focus back to the present and satisfied himself with listening to the subtle patter of heavy droplets on the roof.

When he turned to look at Max again, he noticed that she had dropped off to sleep, quite against her will, apparently, for her arms were still wrapped around her knees, her head lolling against the hard wooden bars that made up the back of the rocking chair.

Her breathing, which had previously been even, now quickened. She was dreaming.

Gabriel was about to turn his attention from her when a thread from one of her dreams reached him. Having a mind that was of Heaven and therefore, not restricted by earthly barriers, he extended his thoughts, reaching into Max's memories as he had with countless other humans.

_Wait and watch_, his brother had said.

And now, finally, he could.

The images came fast as soon as his mind joined with hers. They fluttered and flitted and teased him and Gabriel struggled to make some sense of what he saw.

_A darkened lobby in an apartment building. Elevators to the right. A row of metal mailboxes set into the left wall. _

_Blood smeared over the floor. Faint, angry patterns._

_A woman writhing on the ground. One of the possessed. Her eyes black. Empty. Dead. Dead. Dead._

_And then Max, Max coming out of the shadows, screaming. Gun in hand. Gun in hand._

"_Laurie," she sobs wildly. "Laurie. Laurie!"_

Gabriel pulled his mind away from Max's and back into the dark confines of the tiny living room. For a full minute he sat there and tried to clear his own thoughts.

He was no stranger to the dreams of humans and what he had seen did not shock him. But as he had listened and waited and watched, Gabriel felt sadness touch him. At last, at long last, he understood.

Max had killed her sister.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! In the next installment, Max relates the truth behind her sister's death to Gabriel and is surprised by the archangel's reaction to her confession. Michael returns once more, this time bearing belated Christmas gifts. As previously mentioned, chapter eight is almost complete and should be posted within a week or so.

As always, I would really, really appreciate any reviews. The continued support of you readers has truly kept this story afloat. So, if you have a free minute, please leave me some brief feedback. I would be eternally grateful. ;)

I hope everyone has an enjoyable weekend. Take care!


	8. Chapter Eight Dark Night of the Soul

**Author's Note: **Technically, I suppose this is the second part of chapter seven, although we'll just call it chapter eight, okay? And wow, you guys, I was completely overwhelmed by all the kind feedback I received for the last chapter. Thank you all so much! I appreciate each and every one of your reviews. You've all been such wonderfully supportive readers and I am entirely grateful for all of your comments. So thank you, **Farren Ouro, helendemaria, moondawntreader, Jade, koty m, little biscuit, Yes-Man** and **LadyChantonLa'mour**. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys are awesome! I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Eight The Dark Night of the Soul **

Max had killed her sister. This Gabriel knew, but could not understand. Sitting on the sofa across from her, the darkness of the night pressing against him like a burial shroud, he felt his mind labor beneath the irrationality of it all.

Max had killed her sister, but why? She had loved her sibling. She had loved Laurie as dearly and as closely as the blood that flowed in her veins and the flesh that sat upon her bones. And yet, Max had ended her life. With a bullet. Had brought violence to the one she should have protected and in doing so, had murdered a part of herself.

Had murdered a part of herself…

It seemed inconceivable, but then Gabriel realized the truth of it all.

He had loved his brother, had loved Michael just as he loved each of the feathers on his wings and the hairs on his head. And he had killed his brother, just as Max had killed her sister.

_Why?_

In the past, Gabriel might have been able to ascribe his actions to his own sense of obedience and duty. Michael, unfortunately, had stood in the way of the Father's wishes and Gabriel was the instrument of the Most High.

But did the divide between Michael and himself go beyond that? Was there some deeper meaning beyond obligation and responsibility that led him to hurt the one he held most dear?

Perhaps.

Gabriel himself knew that the matter would never be settled in his mind and he felt the implications of it hang heavily over his head. Reason and logic had long been a source of solace to him and now he was abandoned, alone and entirely bereft.

And in the end, he was not so very different from the human woman sleeping in the rocking chair just a few feet away.

Gabriel didn't know what to make of the thought. He should have been disgusted, and yet, he wasn't.

Sitting still on the sofa did not suit the agitation that had infected his limbs. Gabriel shifted and finally resolved to stand. The process was slow and clumsy, but as soon as he had raised himself to his feet, he was surprised to find some of his strength restored. Turning slightly to ease the aches in his lower back, the tips of his steely wings brushed against the lip of a nearby coffee table.

The sound was subtle, but distinct. And Max, who had only been dozing, stirred awake.

Her eyes were bleary and bloodshot and so very pained. It troubled Gabriel to look at her, to see her curled up in the chair with the ratty afghan around her thin shoulders, the epitome of what it was to be human and weak.

"Oh," she said, her wariness obvious. "What…what are you…" But then she stopped and bit her bottom lip and stared at her hands.

Gabriel could almost hear the chaos of her thoughts, the fear, the suspicion. She was, after all, very perceptive, and had perhaps sensed his intrusion into her dreams. But being human, she would never be able to properly explain what she felt…or what she thought she felt.

Gabriel took pity on her, and summoning a new form of inner strength he never believed he possessed, he opened his heart.

"I know what happened to your sister," he said. Slowly, he lowered himself back onto the couch and sat erect, his shoulders set in a straight line. "I understand."

He thought that she would be angry with him. So much of what Max was, the way she carried herself, the way she reacted to life and the odds set against her, seemed founded in anger. In defiance.

But there was no boldness left in her now. No sharp tongue and cutting glance. Only exhaustion. Only regret. Only fear. Deep, poisonous fear.

Max sat up in the chair and sighed. Her breath whispered passed her lips, accompanied by a thin, indistinct groan. She dropped her elbows onto her knees and let her hands dangle between her legs.

"It was an accident." Her head was bowed, her hair falling in a curtain across her face, obscuring her features from Gabriel.

Without thinking, he leaned forward, hoping to catch some of her expression, to see the inner workings of her soul reflected in her eyes.

He was disappointed.

Max raised her hand and planted her right palm against her forehead. "It was dark," she said, her words low and guttural and tearful. "It was dark. It was dark."

The mantra seemed to steady her and she repeated it, over and over and over again. Her bearing stiffened as she spoke and after a moment, Max regained herself.

"I want to explain," she told him, finally raising her eyes to look at the angel.

Gabriel caught her gaze and for the first time, he found he found trouble holding it. Some personal, private weakness assaulted him. He wanted to look away. To stare out the windows at the sheets of heavy rain, or drop his eyes to the musty carpet beneath his feet. But it was not so easy to play the coward, to give in to what made him uncomfortable and yield to uncertain emotion.

Never mind the quickening of his heart. Never mind the chill that ran up his spine and soon whispered across his flesh in soft, undulating waves. Never mind what he felt or what he thought or the fresh, volatile hesitance that had suddenly intruded upon his resolve.

He must stand firm. He must endure.

And so Gabriel continued to gaze at Max, his face neutral.

"Tell me," he said. "I am listening."

Max appeared surprised. Perhaps she had been expecting his judgment. Perhaps she thought he would rebuke her or condemn her or damn her to Hell. But he did not.

He only waited. Only waited and watched.

"I'm a bad person," Max insisted. She hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms protectively around her middle.

"Do not say such a thing," Gabriel replied sharply. His own strong conviction seemed to steady her.

Max opened her mouth, "It was an accident," she repeated. "And if I had known…that night…that night in L.A." She paused, clamping her jaw shut against a sob. "Oh God, I only did what I had to do, what I thought I should do."

The sentiment was familiar to Gabriel and it resonated within his being, within the very core of his otherworldly soul. His throat tightened.

_I only did what I had to do._

"Go on," he urged. And for all his determination, for all his faith and dedication, he wished he could avoid what was to come.

Penance was never easy, he realized. Not for Max and not for him.

"Go on," he repeated.

Max took a shuddering breath. "Okay," she said. "I'll tell you. I'll tell you everything."

And Gabriel listened.

* * *

**December 23rd****, Los Angeles **

It was one AM, only three hours into her shift. Max looked at her watch, squinting to make out the small minute hands in the dark of the squad car. The radio emitted a static buzz, only to be outdone by the squeak of the windshield wipers.

"God, I have a horrible feeling about tonight," she grumbled. The window was cracked and rain spit in through the small opening, wetting her hair.

Her partner, Officer Joe Barlow, was in the driver's seat, and he eased the squad car around a corner, letting the wheel slide through his hands.

"What, like a double homicide?" he asked.

Max rolled her head in his direction. "No. I meant one of those nights when we cruise around for twelve hours and give out nothing but speeding tickets. I don't know, I've worked this shift for five years and I can't stand it any more."

"Present company excluded, right?" Joe put in. His voice still had a Midwestern twang to it, and his features, which were nothing sort of unassuming and all-American, gave him the look of a farmhand or cowboy.

Max thought it was amazing that after ten years on the job, the man could still laugh and joke around like a high school kid. He had yet to develop that hard edge most cops had, but instead remained gentle, friendly. A real stand-up guy.

She, on the other hand, had never been quite so lucky.

"We could both switch to day," Max offered. She glanced out the passenger side window and saw a young couple walking down the street, hand in hand. They were tipsy, but not overly drunk. Max heard the girl shriek with laughter as her boyfriend whispered something in her ear.

_Pfft, kids. _

"A day shift?" Joe stopped the car at a red light and reached for his water bottle under the seat. "Nah, I can't do that. Sarah needs me at home. Alex is in school, so she gets a break for most of the day, but Ashley is only two. You know how it is."

She didn't, but she kept her mouth shut. Perhaps that was why Joe had never grown the tough skin of a veteran, the hardened, miserable exterior of someone who had been worked to the bone and seen some awful shit in the process.

Her partner was a family man. Had himself a nice wife and two great kids. And Max would be lying if she said she wasn't jealous. Joe had invited her to his house plenty of times and she'd admired his lifestyle, his smiling wife and rambunctious children and the three big dogs that left paw prints on all the white carpets. And hell, why shouldn't a man want to spend every waking minute with his family? It was only natural, wasn't it?

Again, Max didn't know, although she herself did drop by her sister's house every Friday night. But that was different, right? Because Laurie's family, her sweet husband and son Jack, weren't really hers after all…

Max pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, feeling a sinus headache coming on. "Yeah, you're right," she said. "Sarah would probably kill you if you started working days. And me, I guess I like to sleep late. Always been a night person. Hey, did that guy signal?"

She pointed to the SUV that had just changed lanes in front of them, and although she wasn't in the mood to start handing out tickets for minor traffic violations, she was glad for the distraction.

Joe shook his head. "Yeah, he did. A little late, but we can't get him on it. Don't worry, the night is young. Plenty of people coming home drunk from office Christmas parties."

"God, I fucking hate DUIs," Max grunted. She was about to ask Joe for some of his water so that she could take an aspirin when the radio came to life.

"10-71. We've got shots fired at 18th and Grand. 11-99."

Max was immediately alert, her heart racing, adrenalin pumping through her veins. "We got a man down?" she asked.

Joe quickly flipped on the sirens and the lights and floored it. The squad car took a corner hard, the tires screeching in protest. "I don't know. Did they say 18th and Grand?"

"Hold on." Max picked up the receiver and held it to her lips. "10-5, we didn't catch that. Is anyone down?"

They waited, the sound of white noise filling the confines of the car.

Max felt her face grow hot. Her fingers were shaking. Officer down. That was something they never wanted to hear…

"10-5," she repeated, her voice cracking. "Is anyone hurt?"

More static and then…

"10-53. We need someone at 18th and Grand. 10-53. All available units proceed to 18th and Grand. Code 3."

Max felt her stomach drop. This was not good. She turned and looked at Joe. Her partner's face was already streaked with nervous sweat and the lights painted his pale skin an ugly shed of red.

"18th and Grand," he muttered. "18th and Grand."

And Max knew then she had been right about that horrible feeling, about the unease in her gut and the prickly sensation that made her skin go cold. This night, this night…

She knew, somehow, that she would remember this night.

* * *

As it turned out, they were only a few blocks away from 18th and Grand and they ended up being the first unit on the scene. As the car pulled around the corner, Max noticed a large crowd gathered in the middle of the street. Not good. More people meant a bigger mess and from the looks of things, the mob was already riled. Edgy.

It was hard to ignore the tension that hung in the air like so much vile smog. Max knew she couldn't afford to be nervous now. Only calm. Only cool. Only confident.

But she felt like a basket case as Joe stepped on the brake and quickly put the car in park. Her senses were painfully attuned, nostrils dilated like a bloodhound's to catch the first whiff of trouble. Max narrowed her eyes, searching the ground for a body. Her hand was already on the butt of her gun.

"What the hell?" Joe sputtered. He was gripping the door handle, preparing to launch himself out of the car.

And Max was set to follow him, set to charge out into the street and straight into the chaos like she always did. Bravery, she knew, didn't come from moments like this. She only did what was expected of her, what she was asked to do. How could there be anything brave about that?

But tonight, she felt different, skittish, as though she were being watched or followed. And the sensation left her feeling powerless. Completely powerless.

Powerless and afraid. Yes, so terribly afraid.

If Joe was afraid too, he didn't show it. Her partner was standing in the street now, his body shielded by the open car door. "Hands in the air!" he shouted. "Let me see a lot of hands."

Max glanced at him, saw the lights silhouetting his dark form against the pavement. The siren was still blaring but the sound seemed muted. Lost. Far away. Once more, she looked at the crowd.

There wasn't any sign of a man down, no hint of a weapon…just people. A whole mob of people.

Max studied them, observed their rigid shapes and the way their arms hung by their sides, fists clenched.

Something, God, something was wrong here. It looked like a riot about to start and yet, no one seemed intent on throwing punches. Not yet, at least.

Max leaned forward and tried to get a better sense of just who was standing before her. But it had begun to rain again, heavily, and just before the windshield fogged up, she thought she caught a glimpse of a face.

An inhuman face. With black eyes. Black, soulless eyes.

"Let me see your hands!" Joe bellowed, startling Max out of her apathy. He was still behind the car door. "On your knees now!"

It was like a domino effect. A man in the front of the crowd dropped to his knees and the rest followed. But the motion, the flow of the action was awkward. Robotic, almost.

_Like puppets on strings_, Max thought and the hot flush on her face was replaced with a fierce chill.

These people…these people….

"We're gonna have to go hands on," Joe told her, not taking his eyes off the crowd. "Did you call for back-up?"

When she didn't answer, his voice thinned, becoming high and nervous like that of a young boy.

"Max!" he muttered. "Max, did you call for back-up?"

"Uh," she said dumbly, her hand groping for the receiver. "Uh."

The radio was belching out all sorts of noise now. Frantic calls to dispatch. Pleas for help. The words "man down" came back over the airwaves again and again and again.

But Joe was distracted by the crowd.

"All right," he ordered, starting to sidle out from behind the door, "I want everyone to put their hands on their heads, thumbs interlocking. Cross your legs at the ankle. Nobody move! _Nobody move!"_

Her partner started inching towards the crowd. Max knew she should help. Trying to shake off her lethargy and the terrible feeling that something was amiss, she gripped the door handle and pushed it down.

_Wait._

The voice entered her mind, clear and commanding and insistent. Max froze.

_Stay in the car._

Why, she wanted to ask, but already knew the answer.

Joe was only a few feet away from the crowd now, a few paces away. As the lights illuminated his form, Max noticed his hands shaking even as he pointed his gun at the mob. Slowly, he reached for his handcuffs.

"No!" The warning burst from her lips too late.

The man closest to Joe lunged at him, knocked him off his feet and sent his gun skittering across the wet blacktop. For a spilt-second, she saw his face outlined against the red and blue lights, his eyes wide, the whites showing his terror.

"Max, help!" he screamed.

And then the man sunk his teeth into her partner's neck, ripping out his throat with beastly efficiency.

She felt bile rise up into her mouth, but forced it away. The crowd was stirring. They had seen her…

"Oh God!" It was a prayer that reached her lips. Vaguely, she was aware of the St. Michael medal around her neck. "Oh God, please help me!"

Deftly, she lifted herself out of the passenger's seat and jumped into the driver's side. Her hand found the door and closed it just as a woman rushed her squad car. She left a dent in the side as her body bounced off it.

Max didn't think, but threw the car into reverse, skidding back up the street and away from the crowd as fast as she could.

The radio was alive with screams now. Cries and pitiful shouts for assistance.

Max ignored them all, ignored the shield she had pinned to her breast, ignored her duty…

_My sister, _she thought as she gunned the squad car down the street, _I have to get to my sister. _

* * *

Max was right. She would remember this night. Driving away from the mob and through L.A. solidified her every fear and distant, unrealized nightmare.

People were pouring out into the streets, some normal….others not. As Max sped down avenues and through intersections, blowing red lights and narrowly avoiding oncoming cars, she caught glimpses of them. Black-eyed, jaws distended, teeth jagged and pointed.

And there was chaos. Helicopters whirred overhead and glass shattered. As she turned down one boulevard, Max saw a building on fire. There were bodies laying outside in the gutter….

This wasn't a riot, she realized. This wasn't even some kind of attack or disaster.

_Something else_, her fear-skewed sense of logic told her. _This is…this is something else._

The end of the world, maybe.

It didn't matter and Max didn't care. Her sister, her family, would be in the midst of this. The people she loved the most, whom she would gladly and readily die for, were in danger. And that meant something, didn't it? Yes, it meant something.

And so Max drove on, forgetting that she had left her partner alone to die, forgetting that she had sworn to protect and serve and not abandon her post. Fuck it all. Laurie would do the same for her, right?

Her sister's apartment was roughly five miles away from 18th and Grand, in a nice part of L.A. that boasted private schools and pretty, suburban houses. As Max turned the car down the tree-lined streets, she became wary of the absolute silence, the uncomfortable quiet.

No one was stirring here, she mused fearfully, not even a mouse.

After reaching her sister's apartment, Max took a minute to drive the squad car around the block and park it by the garage. She wanted to keep her family off the streets as much as possible and they could reach the car safely if they took the backstairs down to the garage.

As she pulled up the parking brake, Max wondered just what she'd tell Laurie.

_We have to get out of the city_. That was a given, but would her sister listen? Laurie was older than her and thought herself wiser because she had actually finished law school and had gotten a great job with an up and coming firm. But Max knew the city and she knew the streets and she knew that something, yes, _something,_ terrible was happening.

They could get out of town tonight and drive to their grandmother's old ranch in the Mojave. It would be safe, secluded. Far away from whatever the hell was happening in the L.A..

Somehow, some way, Max knew she'd have to convince her sister to leave and take her family with her.

As soon as she exited the car, she drew her gun. There was no one out on the block tonight and even the corny Christmas decorations on the lawn across the street looked sinister.

Max caught sight of the angel perched over the Nativity scene, its white wings lighted, the halo glowing.

What was that prayer again? That prayer to St. Michael? He was an angel, wasn't he?

_St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle…_

Carefully, Max slipped around the block and to the front door of the apartment building. She had a key to the lobby and thought it might be best to use it instead of startling her sister out of bed by ringing the bell. But she was shocked-and downright scared-when she saw that the door was ajar. There was no sign of forced entry, she noted. Someone had just left it open.

Wide open.

Immediately, Max flattened herself against the wall. She remembered encountering similar situations many times over while on patrol, coming up to a house that had been broken into, inching her way around the corner, gun first. Always watching. Always waiting for the boogeyman to come leaping out at her.

Tonight was no different, or was it? She didn't have Joe here to provide cover….

_Joe._

Without warning, Max got a mental image of Sarah, Joe's wife, looking anxiously outside her window, waiting for her husband to return home, her kids hanging onto her hands. They were only six and two, Joe's children. Babies. And Sarah wouldn't stand a chance if someone came to her door, someone just as wild and crazed as the man who had ripped her husband's throat out…

Max shook her head and forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Maybe, if she was able to get Laurie and her family out of the city, she could go back for Sarah. She owed it to Joe, at the very least.

Joe who she had left behind to die.

"Fuck." The word pushed passed Max's lips in a harsh whisper. She tried to steady her breathing. After a moment of perilous hesitation, she inched through the open door, keeping her back to the wall.

The darkness inside the lobby prompted her to reach for her flashlight. Max turned it on by pushing it against her chest and then balanced it beneath her gun. The beam bounced erratically around the hall until she stabilized it. She checked the stairs first, saw that they were clear, and then directed the light to the back of the lobby, towards the elevators. As she moved, the beam preceded her steps. When she reached the elevators, Max let the light rise, up along the wall to the rows of metal mailboxes directly to her right. That's when she saw it…

…blood

The red of it was bright. Angry. _Fresh._

Max's throat contracted in fear and she choked. God, oh God, she was too late…

In the minute it took for her concentration to waver, a shadow took form and launched itself from the corner at her.

Max reeled back, felt the weight of her attacker's body on her, heard a menacing, animalistic growl…saw two black, inhuman eyes.

Succumbing to primal instinct, Max screamed and cried for help. No one came. No one heard her. Hands scratched at her clothing, the nails finding the exposed flesh of her neck and digging into the skin. Her attacker pulled back and grabbed the front of her shirt, lifting her off the ground and then slamming her back down onto the hard lobby floor.

Max felt all the air escape from her lungs in a painful gasp and the world swam before her eyes. She was disoriented, had lost all sense of time and place. But then reality came rushing back when she felt the attacker reaching for her wrist, scratching at the hand that held her firearm.

"No!" Max rasped. She dragged her arm away from the clawing fingers. At once, she felt the cold barrel of her gun come into contact with the soft flesh of her attacker's abdomen.

And she fired. Once. Twice.

The figure went rigid, screamed and howled and then slumped to the floor. Max scurried to her feet and in doing so, kicked her fallen flashlight. In an instant, she had the light in her hands again and she focused the beam on the seizing body.

It was a woman. A woman still in her pajamas. A woman with blond hair tied up in a messy ponytail and a face with wide lips and high cheekbones. One hand was clawing at her bleeding chest and Max noticed the ring on her finger, opal in a band of gold. It had belonged to their mother.

And Max couldn't help herself. She screamed.

Laurie. She had killed Laurie.

* * *

And there it was. The truth. Cold and unforgiving. Sharp and devastating. Gabriel felt the weight of it settle around his shoulders, reaching down his back and his wings until each of his feathers seemed to reverberate with the echo of it.

In his mind it sounded, an unwanted and unwelcome bell. A death knell. The archangel put his hand to his brow and tried to drive the noise away.

Poor Max. His pity for her was not founded on disdain, but rather, born from compassion and sympathy and an understanding he thought only Michael possessed. Perhaps he had underestimated his own sense of empathy.

Or perhaps he simply saw Max's suffering for what it was. His own.

The woman had collapsed upon finishing her story, her prone body resting against the hard wooden slats that made up the back of the rocking chair, her head tilted upward, eyes on the ceiling.

"I killed my sister," she said. "I just left her body there in that fucking lobby. I didn't even stop to close her eyes or cover her head with something. And then I went upstairs and found Jack all alone in the apartment, told him we had to go and that his parents would follow us. I don't even know where his father is. Probably dead too. But it doesn't matter. I lied to Jack…and…and I'm still lying to him. It's disgusting, isn't it? You must be repulsed by me, I know." Max paused and dropped her chin down onto her chest, her eyes peering at Gabriel through the fringe of her hair.

"You must think I'm horrible," she continued. "Your skin must crawl just being in the same room with me. I remember reading this book when I was in college for a religion class. It was by C.S. Lewis and he wrote about how vile human beings must appear to God. I remember reading that, to this day, I remember it. Do I appear vile to you? You're an angel…I know that, even though I won't say it in front of Jack. Do you find me disgusting for what I am? Do you think I deserve to be damned?"

Gabriel tried to respond, but his tongue seemed to cleave to the roof of his mouth. His lips were dry and he swallowed, feeling a hard, choking lump at the back of his throat.

She had disgusted him, yes, but only because he was blind. Blind to his own sins, which were, in a way, the same as Max's.

"No," he said truthfully. "I do not find you wretched, nor do I think you deserve to be damned."

"How come?" she asked. His response seemed to have strengthened her somehow, and she sat forward in her chair, looking at him through the heavy, veiled shadows.

"Because I am also guilty," he said and each word hurt, lodged a stone in his throat and left his voice raw. "You do not know, Max."

"Tell me."

"I-"

"Tell me." She was insistent. Determined.

Gabriel watched as her face changed, as it became soft with uncommon sympathy and gentle with some measure of unspoken hope. She needed him, he realized, and he could not-would not-abandon her now.

The truth was his to tell.

"My wounds," he began, his hand instinctively finding the stitched gash that crossed his stomach, "I never told you how I got them. You found me as I lay dying in that gully, you saw the blood run from my body…Max, it was Michael who gave me my wounds. Michael, my own brother. And he only wounded me because I…yes I, wounded him. I killed him."

She did not understand him at once and he had to relate his own sorry tale to her. He told her what he could and then he told her more until she knew everything, all that had happened at the diner, the final furious battle with Michael on the mountaintop and how he had been left behind by his brother, left behind only to be found by two humans.

"Oh," Max said when he had finished. Her face had paled. "I didn't know."

"You couldn't have," Gabriel replied. His chest heaved with a sigh and an ache settled somewhere in his ribcage, persistent, gnawing.

"Would you…" Max paused, chewing on the side of her lip, "would you have really killed that woman and her baby?"

Gabriel did not hesitate. "Yes."

He wondered if she would judge him then. If she would revile and abuse him. Call him heartless. Call him a monster.

But once more, Max surprised him.

"It's all right, you know," she said. "I think…I think I understand. I know what it's like. Being a cop, it's not the same, but sometimes you have to do things you don't want to. Sometimes you have to hurt people…like I have."

"Like I have," Gabriel echoed her words.

Silence stretched between them. A wild, high wind battered the house. Instinctively, Gabriel steeled himself against it, his wings tensing to oppose the blast. But then he remembered that he was inside, protected by walls of brick and mortar. Safe.

Safe.

Max emitted something that sounded like a faint moan and pressed a finger to her temple. "I'm sorry," she said.

Gabriel was perplexed by her reaction and his confusion showed on his face, a tightening of the lips, a slight, careful frown.

Max shook her head. "What I said to you before, about you and your brother not seeing eye to eye, that was wrong of me. I offended you."

"Only because you were right," Gabriel replied.

Max said nothing. Instead, she turned her head and looked out the window at the rain. The storm had picked up, throwing droplets onto the glass where they trailed down to the sill in faint, serpentine patterns. When Max finally glanced back at him, he saw that she was crying.

"God," she whispered, her voice no longer caustic, but prayerful. Intense. "God, God help me. God help us."

Gabriel was touched when she included him in her mournful petition, so much so that he rose to his feet.

Max started and her hands clutched the arms of her chair, ready to brace herself if she needed to stand and flee.

And somehow, Gabriel managed to find a reassuring smile for her.

"God will help us," he said, even though he was not entirely certain. Michael might insist that he was not in disfavor with the Father, but he himself felt abandoned. Lost.

"Maybe I should feel better," Max said, her head cast back so that she could take in all of his towering frame, "maybe I should feel comforted, but I don't. I killed my sister. I killed her."

"And I killed my brother."

Max did not respond, only buried her head in her hands and sobbed. And Gabriel was moved in a way that he had never been before.

Slowly, awkwardly, he put his hand on her shoulder.

She flinched when he touched her, but Gabriel was not deterred. Waiting a beat, he lifted his other arm and wrapped it around her weak body in a tentative embrace. Max tensed and he felt all her muscles coil, her entire being resisting him.

He persisted and he held for her long time, until the storm had bleed the last of its rain and the sky had calmed and cleared and the night became still once more.

And at last, Max too stilled. She placed her hand near his shoulder, careful to avoid the healing wound, and looked at him.

They said nothing.

_Penance is never easy_, Gabriel thought, _but it is a blessing to have it. _

After a while, when Max's breathing had evened and Gabriel's heartbeat had slowed, he forced himself to break the quiet softness between them, forced himself to return to a reality that was painful and dark and full of doubt.

"You ought to get some sleep," he told her.

Max seemed reluctant, but she nodded. "I will."

Slowly, Gabriel helped her to rise, as she had aided him the day before and sher aw her down the hall to her room. Before Max closed the door on him, she turned and offered him a poor, strained smile.

"Some night, huh?" she muttered.

"Some night," Gabriel responded. And the door shut.

* * *

The next morning dawned bright and clear and cold. Before the sun had lit the low plains lying before the distant mountains, Gabriel rose and carefully made his way outside the house. The humans were not stirring and he enjoyed the solitary moments of peace afforded to him, when he could stand amidst the fresh, high wind and listen to the subtle, almost unnoticed sounds of the world.

It was winter still and the ground was hard beneath his booted feet. Frozen. Underneath the soil, he detected the slow, soft-bellied slither of tiny snakes and earth worms. And overhead, in the sky, he heard the welcoming caws and calls of the tiny birds that alighted in the low-lying shrubs nearby to pick at the dried grasses.

All this Gabriel felt and when the wind came, he rejoiced as it touched his wings and slipped through his feathers. The first few rays of light graced the tops of the far-off mountains and cast purple-hued brilliance down their lofty peaks.

The air was crisp and free and he breathed it in, deep into his being where his weary and withered soul was slowly renewed.

He felt strangely like a poet that morning, standing before the empty paddocks that had once housed the horses Max's grandmother so loved. He felt keen and clear-minded and tender-hearted. He felt reborn.

Baptized was the proper word for it, Gabriel realized. He was cleansed. Purified. The waters had rushed upon him the night before when he sat with Max and let her cry in his arms. But now the great flood was receding. The day was promising. New, sure strength steadied his limbs.

And there was peace. Peace.

When he heard the humans stirring in their house, Gabriel lingered outside, unwilling to part with his own private joy. The cold air played across the exposed skin of his arms and raised goose bumps. For a moment, he thought of casting himself into the sky in mindless, careless flight. He thought to rise and soar, to extend his wings and embrace the new world. But then he remembered Max and Jack. Then he remembered what he meant to them.

It was compassion, not duty, that drove him inside away from the dawn. Gabriel passed through the garage, shaking off the chill as he opened the door to the house and stepped inside.

Max and Jack were already at the kitchen table and the smell of oatmeal wafted through the room.

"I'm sorry," Max said as she thrust a bowl at her nephew, "but it's all we have. I don't like it either. Never did."

"That doesn't make it taste any better," Jack said as he dipped his spoon into the bowl to stir the gray, unsavory mass. "We don't have any sugar, right?"

Max sighed. "No, this is it. I know it sucks. I know. But just…just deal with it." She turned to put the kettle on the stove and in doing so, caught sight of Gabriel.

Their eyes met.

Gabriel could not deny the slight thrill he experienced when he recognized the untested and unexpected unity between them. Max trusted him, this he knew. And she no longer begrudged his presence. A hint of softness, of respect and admiration, penetrated her otherwise hardened exterior.

"Hey," she said and a small smile curved her lips. "I was wondering where you'd gone."

Gabriel was about to respond, about to tell her that he had only wanted some air and that he would never have left her and Jack alone, when a knock sounded on the front door.

Max jumped and Jack jumped and Gabriel wheeled about, looking over his shoulder.

He had not seen anyone outside, he had not noticed any intruder…

Out of pure instinct, he took a step forward and placed himself in-between the kitchen and the door, remembering his vow to protect Jack, and now also, Max. But his hands were empty and he had no weapon close by. And even Gabriel the Archangel, who was ever confident in battle, knew that his strength was still too greatly diminished to win a pitched fight.

It was a horrible feeling, this powerlessness….

After a moment of hesitation the door opened, seemingly of its own accord and a head peered inside.

Michael.

"Pardon my intrusion," he said, "but may I come in?"

Relief swept through Gabriel. He was too surprised at seeing his brother to properly receive him. Instead, he numbly stepped aside so that Michael could enter and nodded in greeting as the angel passed him.

And Michael dropped his hand on Gabriel's shoulder, but said nothing to him.

Both Max and Jack were staring at their visitor, though this time, Gabriel noticed that Max did not immediately leap forward to protect her nephew.

_Trust_, he thought vaguely. _It is indeed a pleasant thing._

Michael was in the kitchen now and he folded his wings carefully behind him to avoid hitting the counters and cabinets that lined the walls of the tiny space. It was only then that Gabriel realized his brother had a large cloth sack slung over his shoulder.

"Good morning," he said in a hearty voice, one that was still slightly ragged and chilled from flying through the crisp morning air. "I am sorry I did not give you a proper warning of my visit, but I wanted to bring you some things." And with a knowing smile, he reached into the bag and pulled out a loaf of bread, fresh fruit, and for Jack, a jar of peanut butter.

The boy laughed wildly as he took the food from Michael. "It's kinda like Christmas," he cried, his voice cracking, "It's like Christmas, Max, but instead of stupid Santa, we have an angel."

And Gabriel could not help but share in the child's joy, so true and simple it was.

"In that case, I have a gift for your aunt," Michael said and he fished another small box from out of his sack for Max.

She took it from him and turned it over in her hands in amazement. "Matches," she muttered, her lips struggling to form the word. "Matches. I…I was looking all over for these."

Fingers trembling, jaw strained from holding back tears, Max raised her head. "Thank you," she whispered, though she was not looking at Michael when she spoke.

Only Gabriel.

* * *

**Author's Note: **A tiny bit of fluff after a boatload of angst, although I warn you, this will be a rather dark, dramatic fic for the most part. ^_^

The book Max mentions is actually C.S. Lewis's "Problem of Pain", a text of Christian theology. Although, as is obvious, Max rather oversimplifies his argument of God finding humans repulsive.

In the next chapter, Gabriel debates whether or not he should spare Max the pain of telling Jack about his parents by revealing the truth to the boy himself. Meanwhile, Max and Michael get to know each other better. And finally, three unexpected visitors arrive at the house and promptly shatter the newly restored peace.

Fortunately, I am on spring break this week and my professors were kind enough to not assign too much homework, so I should have the next chapter written and posted soon. Until then, take care and be well all!

**A Note on Police Codes: **I myself am not a police officer, nor do I have any friends or family members that work in law enforcement, so the police codes used in this chapter are based solely on my own research. If they are inaccurate or incorrect, I do apologize. The translations, as I have found them, are as follows:

10-71 : Shooting

11-99 : Officer needs help!

10-5 : Repeat message

10-53 : Man down

Code 3 : Use lights and sirens


	9. Chapter Nine The Messenger

**Author's Note: **Welcome to chapter nine of Absolution. As always, I'd like to thank everyone who reviewed the last chapter, **Farren Ouro, Yes-Man, helendemaria, little biscuit, **and **Boundless Hearts**. In addition, I'd also like to thank all the readers that took the time to add this story to their favorites/author's alerts. I really appreciate your kind support and encouragement. Thanks a million, everyone! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Nine The Messenger**

There were canned goods. Soups. Three loaves of bread. Boxes of cereal. Bottled water. A small selection of ripe fruit. A first aid kit and batteries and two extra flashlights.

Gabriel watched as Max and Jack went through the supplies Michael had brought them, pulling items from the sack and exclaiming over each new thing. Their happiness and excitement was tempered only by a nearly overwhelming sense of relief. Gabriel noted the renewed smile on Max's face, saw how the tense line of her shoulders had eased and how she even laughed when Jack cracked a couple of his jokes.

"I can't believe this," she said, picking up a can of peaches, her fingertips brushing over the crinkled paper label. "I really can't believe this."

"That's your problem," Jack said and he snatched the peaches from her. "You never believe in anything."

Max's smile was lopsided as she threw her arm over the boy's shoulder and gave him a quick hug. "Come on. Help me put this stuff away, kiddo."

With much enthusiasm, the humans began to sort through the canned goods and the flurry of activity provided Gabriel with the distraction he needed. He looked to Michael.

His brother was standing on the other side of the kitchen by the living room, giving Max and Jack plenty of space as they scurried about replenishing the empty shelves and stocking the bare cupboards. And although Michael's expression remained neutral, Gabriel thought he saw a faint gleam in his eyes, a small token of personal satisfaction and joy.

How like his brother to find peace in human happiness. Gabriel, on the other hand, had never allowed himself the privilege of such open emotion, preferring instead the stability and the distance of practiced detachment. To become so invested in the workings of the human race, to share in man's triumphs and weep for his sorrows made little sense to him…although even he was beginning to wonder if his perceptions of humanity were not a little prejudiced.

But Gabriel had more pressing matters to attend to aside from his empty ruminations.

He reached forward, touching Michael's elbow just above his leather vambrace.

"A moment," he said quietly.

Michael understood. He followed Gabriel out of the kitchen and they discreetly slipped away, leaving the house for the privacy of the garage, which still smelled faintly of angelic blood. Standing next to Max's squad car, Gabriel waited until his brother had shut the door before he addressed him.

"I know we still have not settled the matter between us," he said, "but I must speak with you."

Michael raised a brow. "Brother, I had thought we were at peace."

Gabriel's nostrils dilated and he fluttered his wings, enjoying still the lost whisper of the dawn wind through his feathers. He let the memory of the soft morning skies quiet his mind and silence the sharp retort resting on his tongue.

He did not, after all, wish to quarrel with his brother again.

"Yes, we are," Gabriel said, although his jaw tensed as he spoke the words. As far as he was concerned, things were still uneasy between Michael and him. His hot anger towards his brother had faded, only to be replaced by a steady, subtle ache that beat persistently in his breast.

Healing would come in time, this he knew. Not today, though. Not now.

As if reading his brother's thoughts, Michael took a step forward and gestured at Gabriel's abdomen. "Your wounds?" he asked.

"I am mending," Gabriel assured him, even though he still felt the stitches pulling his flesh back together, still felt the ragged edges of the gash where Michael's blade had sliced through him and the hole in his shoulder through which he had plunged his own mace.

"And the humans?" his brother prompted. "I heard your prayer the other night. They were in need of food and supplies and I thought to-"

"My orders," Gabriel cut him off abruptly. "What are they are?"

Michael stood very still. "Your orders?"

"You informed me that I was to remain behind." Gabriel flexed his fingers, feeling the tendons in his wrists bunch as he did so. "You told me you knew nothing more."

Michael lifted his head. "I see that you are unhappy here. Impatient to return-"

"Not unhappy," Gabriel said, surprising even himself as the words left him mouth. "Only concerned."

Michael said nothing for a moment, though Gabriel could sense his brother's mind working, could almost hear the rhythm of his ruminations, the music of his musings like some great choir in a high, vaulted cathedral.

But Michael expressed only an echo of those same thoughts when he finally did speak.

"I fear you will be angry with me," he said, "for I have heard nothing more. Only that you should remain. Your place is here."

It was not the news he wanted to hear. Gabriel stopped flexing his fingers and formed them into tight fists.

"I cannot say that I understand," he replied, "but I will accept what has been asked of me…my duty."

"It is true of your nature." A small smile appeared on Michael's face. "Although I would hope, truly hope, brother, that you have found your time with Max and Jack to be something more than another trial, another painful duty. Surely you must see that-"

But Gabriel wasn't listening to him. Instead, he thought of Max and how she had wept so pitifully the night before, how she had opened her soul to him, how he had held her in his arms…

…in his arms.

"Max," Gabriel interrupted, seized, as he was, by a curiosity so insistent it was painful. "Did you do know about Max?"

Again, Michael raised his eyebrows and his face was thin, his cheeks hollowed out by worry. "Her sister?"

"Yes."

"I cannot say that I knew the particulars," Michael said, "but I sensed the great weight of her sin upon her."

"You would call it a sin?" Gabriel replied quickly. For some reason, the word troubled him. Crawled under his skin and left him feeling apprehensive. Yes, Max had sinned. She was human, a creature who had been born with the crimes of Adam and Eve upon her soul. A being who still had the taste of the forbidden apple on her lips. But the death of her sister was based on circumstance…one that was frightfully similar to Gabriel's.

Suddenly, he remembered the great crush of Michael's arms around his neck, his eyes bulging, the pain in his head and throat and lungs building, his mace lying on the floor…

"It is not my place to judge," Michael said at length. He lowered his head and Gabriel wondered if his brother had ever judged _him_ for his own actions.

_That's why you failed Him._

Gabriel shut his eyes and shook his head, trying to rid himself of treacherous self-doubt. His hands lit upon his stomach and he felt the fabric of his tunic stiffened with dried blood from his wound.

"Max told me of her trials," he said, forcing his eyes open.

"And you brought her comfort." Michael's expression was sympathetic. "You held her in your arms, brother…and I had thought humans repulsed you."

Gabriel waved his hand. "My opinion stands, but I hold no ill will against Max and Jack. They…they are good people. But I have worries. I have seen the misery in this house. Max is not entirely free of her burden. The boy, the child does not know."

Silence. The garage suddenly seemed too small and Gabriel fought the urge to stretch his wings till they reached their full span, to test the confines of oppressive reality itself. From inside the house, he heard the happy chatter of the humans. Jack laughing. Max scolding.

_Aunt and nephew_, Gabriel thought. There was much love between them. And peace. Blessed, rare peace.

But it had been Max who had killed Jack's mother, who had pierced the womb that had carried him with a bullet from her gun. It was a violation. A mistake, yes, a mistake.

Gabriel decided he found the term mistake more comfortable than sin, but what would Jack call it if he knew?

Murder, he would call it murder.

Michael seemed to have some understanding of the matter himself. He let his shoulders slump, the tips of his wings brushing the concrete floor. "Jack is perceptive."

"Keenly perceptive."

Michael's thoughtful frown narrowed. "I can say nothing of this. My counsel is useless, for in your heart, you have known your duty."

Gabriel's muscles tensed. Yes, he knew his duty and it seemed strange of Michael to remind him of it now, Michael who had so readily cast off obedience in favor of his own principles.

But this, he sensed, had nothing to do with Michael's betrayal. Only him. Only what Gabriel was and what he stood for and what he himself was beholden to.

"I have done what has been asked of me," Gabriel said and despite his restraint, his words were still cutting.

Yes, he had done all that had ever been asked of him, but obedience itself was a double-edged sword. A ruse, perhaps, that only resulted in a pyrrhic victory. Gabriel could uphold his duty, could summon the strength to carry out the one order that he abhorred by killing his own brother, and yet, his adherence to duty meant nothing. Nothing.

The notion was enough to shake the very foundation of his own philosophy, but Gabriel knew he could not afford to wallow in the loss of his ideals, his inherent virtues.

But was there not something more to his life other than duty? Certainly there had to be, certainly he could not be entirely bereft…

As always, Michael had an answer ready for him.

"Honesty and truth," his brother said. "You have whispered naught but honesty and truth into the ears of men since their creation. You brought word to Daniel and Zechariah and to Mary, who was blessed amongst all women. You have spoken to princes and peasants and called the souls of the dying out of their earthly bodies. Do not shy from what you are now, brother. Do not forget that you are always the Messenger."

Gabriel's throat tightened, the iron collar about his neck digging into his flesh. Messenger, yes. The herald. The Annunciation. He who had brought glad tidings of great joy to men and he who had delivered unto them the utter depths of holy wrath and horror.

"Remember," Michael told him.

_Remember_. The word rang against Gabriel's skull, pulsed in time with his heart, echoed the whisper of his breath.

_Remember._

"Is that an order?" he asked. "Or your own freely given counsel?"

"Neither," Michael replied. He reached forward and clasped Gabriel's hand. "I leave this entirely to you. Tell Jack what you will of his parents or tell him nothing at all."

"I understand," Gabriel said and although the spirit of reconciliation infused the stale air of the garage, he twisted his hand out his brother's grasp and turned away.

And then the moment was broken and Gabriel saw Michael standing in the garage next to the dented squad car, the trappings of humanity surrounding them both and pulling them to Earth even though they belonged to Heaven alone.

Michael stooped down and reached for a small cardboard box sitting neglected beside the door. "Candles," he said simply. "I brought them candles."

He turned and headed into the house, pushing the door open with his shoulder. Gabriel followed him and they found Max and Jack still fussing with their new supplies. Jack was standing by the table, handing cans to his aunt while she placed them neatly inside the cabinets.

The woman looked up when she saw the angels return, but before she could speak, Michael held up the box in his arms for her to see.

"I thought you might like a few more candles," he said lightly. "After all, wax is so impermanent and the wicks burn low in a single evening."

"Yeah, thanks," Max said. "Why don't you just put them-"

"I saw a shed out back," Michael supplied. "Jack can take them there, can't he?" He handed the box off to the boy.

"Sure thing," Jack said. "I'll be right back." Deftly, he sidled passed the two angels and out to the garage.

Michael looked at his brother and mouthed, "Go."

Gabriel nodded and without a word, he followed Jack outside.

_Remember_, he thought, as he watched the boy trot happily before him. _Remember._

But oh, if only he could forget…

* * *

The shed behind the house Michael spoke of was larger than Gabriel expected. It sat on a wide, dirt drive in front of the paddocks and in the shadow of a low-roofed stable. The scent of horse was heavy in the air, and when the wind blew right, he thought he also detected the warm odor of hay and grain.

Jack led the way to the shed, which was surprisingly sturdy for having stood so long exposed to the unforgiving climate of the desert, although the peeling paint on the green walls _did_ have the unsavory look of scabs. The front of the building was taken up entirely by two double doors and as they drew closer, Gabriel stepped forward to pull back the bolt that held them shut.

"Thanks," Jack said as he shifted the box in his arms. "You might want to watch your head."

Gabriel followed him inside and found that he did indeed have to duck to avoid the sloping roof. Cobwebs dusted the top of his head and wings, sending an unpleasant, itchy sensation creeping along his fresh. His heavy boots made the wooden floor creak piteously. The wind rushed in behind him, stirring the scattered remnants of wood shavings and the bits of grain the mice hadn't gotten to yet.

Jack reached overhead and pulled on a dangling string, causing the light bulb above to turn on with a muted click. Hazy light flooded the square space and Gabriel was surprised to see just how cluttered it was.

Tarnished brass hooks lined the walls and from them hung worn bridles, the leather reins and browbands now brittle with age, the metal bits dulled by grime. There was a set of shelves along the right and piled on each he saw several moldy and moth-eaten horse blankets, their colors now faded to a uniform brown. Positioned in the middle of the shed were three stands and upon each sat a saddle.

Gabriel touched the stirrup of one before running his hand down the smooth seat. The touch of leather beneath his calloused palm was somehow steadying, soothing.

Jack walked to the back of the shed and deposited his box on the closed lid of a grain bin.

"This was my great-grandma's old tack room," he told the angel, wiping his hands on the sides of his jeans only to leave dusty streaks on his thighs. "Max thinks I'm crazy, but I always liked this place. I remember this one summer, right after my grandma died, we all had to come out here. I was just a kid, I thought it was a vacation, but really, Mom, Dad and Max had to figure out what to do with all of Grandma's horses. Must've been a real headache for them. But while they were all in the stable meeting with buyers, I used to hang out in here. Made it my own clubhouse. I lived in an apartment, you know, so I never had a tree house or a backyard. That was the best summer. My dad even let me hang a sheet from the ceiling like a room divider. He…"

Jack stopped and leaned against the bin.

Gabriel felt his heart tighten. Michael was right. The boy needed to know.

But Max shouldn't be the one to tell the him. Jack loved his aunt, that much was clear, and to hear such news from her, such devastating, life-changing news, might turn him against her.

The child was still a child after all, Gabriel realized. And children were not rational creatures. Even Jack, who seemed wise beyond his years, would be prone to the uneven temperament and poor judgment of his age. He could very easily lash out…and he could very easily blame Max for his parents' death.

_No_. Gabriel shut his eyes briefly. That must not happen. What existed between aunt and nephew was sacred and the archangel knew he must find a way to shield them both from tragedy.

It occurred to him then how very fragile human beings were. In the past, he had readily equated their failures with weakness, although now he felt a deeper understanding take hold.

Perhaps their fragility was not something to be scorned. Perhaps it was indeed a beautiful thing. Innocent. Unsullied. Pure.

Michael surely knew this himself. It was the reason he loved humans so.

And as Gabriel stood there, he remembered the night before, when he had held Max in his arms and felt the tiny bones of her body and her weary heart and wounded, marred soul.

A faint tingle reached across his flesh, and, with no little difficulty, he suppressed a shiver.

There was, perhaps, some faint merit in this fragility, he thought, but then he reminded himself of Jack. Jack who stood before him with unspoken fear on his young face and the weight of the world in his eyes.

And Gabriel, the Messenger of the Creator, the Left-hand of God, the herald of the end of time, was moved by compassion.

"You love your parents very much," he said, keeping his hand atop the saddle.

Jack half-shrugged, squirming slightly. "Yeah."

"And you love your Aunt Max?"

"Yeah."

"She has cared for you," Gabriel said slowly. "And she will always care for you. I know this. I know you are the reason she lives now and breathes and fights. She loves you more than her life. You should take comfort in that, Jack."

"I guess I do," the boy said. He blinked his eyes, appearing, for the first time, uncomfortable before the angel.

Gabriel was not deterred. He was the Messenger, the bearer of news from on high, from the very lips of God.

_I am Gabriel. I stand in the Presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you.*_

"Jack," he said the child's name, stepping forward until he was close enough to touch him. And seeing how he towered over the boy, Gabriel knelt, dropping one hand on the boy's shoulder as he did so. Steadying himself. Steadying the child. "Your parents have passed on from this world. They are dead."

He did not know how the boy would take the news. Grief, although not foreign to him, was an indefinite thing. A wild and raging emotion. Gabriel had seen men go mad while in its grip, had seen it ravage and destroy and oppress. Sorrow was indeed an unprejudiced conqueror. Something that was feared and reviled and almost never accepted.

His own sensibilities had so recently been plagued by the same torment. Gabriel remembered quite clearly how terrible it had been to stand before Michael as his brother lay upon the diner floor. He remembered the neat puncture in his chest and the life-blood pouring out across his brother's shoulder and the short, sharp gasps for air…the wide open eyes…death…death…

The moment had very nearly shattered him, and now, he couldn't imagine what the same pain was doing to Jack.

Gabriel looked at his scrawny little body and thought of the boy's tiny heart laboring under the sorrow, his young, innocent mind struggling to understand what could not be understood after a million lifetimes.

And it wasn't fair, he realized. It was never fair.

Jack inhaled sharply and a sob rode the edge of his sigh. He pressed one hand to his stomach with an expression of mingled relief and resignation. "I had a knot in there," he said, fisting his fingers against his abdomen. "I've had a knot in there since we left L.A. because…because I think I knew, Gabriel. I thought about it every night but I never said anything to Max. It was there, though. I couldn't get it out of my mind. I knew they were dead, I felt it. Do you…do you know what that's like?…to feel something coming, to know it…I hate it," Jack's words tumbled out in a rush and when he had finished, he clamped his jaw shut.

Gabriel saw his chin begin to tremble.

"Yes, I do know," he replied, placing his left hand on Jack's shoulder now. "The knowledge of the thing, well, it can be worse than the thing itself."

And he spoke from experience, his own experience. Gabriel himself had felt a shadow of Jack's terrible foreboding, had felt treacherous denial and dashed hope and unwilling resignation.

He remembered the day Michael had come to him not so long ago and told him of his intent to disobey the Father.

"_You question Him."_

"_I question myself."_

A stone had dropped into Gabriel's stomach that day. Had grown cold and hard and twisted his insides with terrible worry and fear and knowing, yes knowing.

The knowing was worse, he decided, knowing what was to come and not being able to stop it, for there were some things in life that could never be avoided. Never.

"I knew," Jack said, as if confirming the angel's musings. "I knew they were dead. Not just because of the way Max looked whenever she talked about them, but because the way I felt inside. I can breathe now, though. I can…"

And then the boy broke down and Gabriel let the child sob in his arms, as he had with his aunt the night before.

_So many tears from such a little body, from such a young, tender soul_, he thought and as the child cried, he felt his own resolve waver.

It was awful to behold such vulnerability in one so weak, so fragile, yet worse to feel it. With his massive hands on the boy's back, Gabriel could feel each ragged inhalation and exhalation of Jack's lungs, could feel the frantic beating of his pulse and hear the painful constriction of his throat every time he sobbed.

The boy's tears soon drenched his tunic, replacing the blood that had stained his garments only a few days previous.

Gabriel did not bother to soothe the boy as he wept. Instead, he embraced Jack's raw sorrow and when the child was quiet, the angel let him settle into the silence, let the world right itself and time resume its endless course before he even thought of speaking.

"You have heard before," he said, holding Jack at arm's length so that he could look into his red and swollen eyes, "you have heard before that those who pass on will be reunited with their loved ones in Paradise. I tell you now that this is true. I tell you now that the time that separates you from your parents, the agony of this life, is but a passing thing. Although the long years may stretch before you, I promise that the eternity you will spend with your parents in Paradise will far outweigh the grief and the pain you feel now. Can you find comfort in that, child? Can you take heart once more?"

Jack opened his mouth, but spoke no words.

Gabriel held the boy's gaze, and he breathed the peace of Heaven and all that was ever-lasting and pure and good into him.

"I do not ask you to forget them," he said slowly. "And I do not ask you to overlook your grief. I only ask that you remember my promise. Do you recall what I told you when you first brought me to this house and cared for my wounds? Do you remember what I said? Do not be troubled. I promise you that things will be well again. I say it now, Jack. I wish you would believe it."

A beat of silence, then…

"Yeah," Jack said, sniffing. The boy wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his shirt. "Yeah, I believe you, Gabriel. I believe…"

But he didn't finish. The sound of a car coming up the road startled them both.

"Is that Max?" Jack asked even as Gabriel got to his feet and moved to the open door of the shed. "Is she going somewhere in the squad car?"

Gabriel raised his hand and silenced the boy. Around the front of the house, he saw an old pick-up truck come rumbling down the road, its tires spinning slightly on the dusty track, spewing pebbles and sand everywhere.

_My weapons_, he thought vaguely, but then remembered that Michael was still within the house. Some measure of uncertain relief accompanied the thought, but suspicion rose anew when he saw the truck stop next to one of the paddocks.

There were two people inside the cab.

And then the driver's side door opened and a man climbed out, a man with wide, fearful eyes. He was wearing only a thin t-shirt and on his exposed arms, the angel saw the same black markings that covered Michael's body.

The mountaintop. Gabriel thought of the mountaintop.

"_Why do you continue to fight when you know all hope is lost?"_

"_Fuck you."_

The man moved around to the passenger's side door and opened it, helping a woman step out onto the dirt drive. She had a bundle of blankets in her arms, a baby…

"Gabriel?" Jack whispered questioningly. He was standing beside the angel, looking at the new arrivals with curiosity. "Who are they?"

* * *

**Author's Note: **Just for the record, Charlie and Jeep will not be major characters in this story, although they will pop up rather infrequently now and then.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read. If you have a free moment, please leave me a review. Any and all feedback is invaluable to a writer and I do truly appreciate all comments I receive.

In the next chapter, Max and Michael have a conversation and Max begins to reconsider her original impression of Gabriel. Tension mounts as Jeep and Charlie get reacquainted with the archangel who very recently tried to kill them. I've already written a good amount of chapter ten and should have it posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!

_*This quote can be found in the Gospel of Luke 1:19. _


	10. Chapter Ten The Unwelcome Reunion

**Author's Note: **Oh my goodness. I still cannot get over the overwhelming response I received for the last chapter. It's official, you guys are the best readers/reviewers ever. Thank you so much **little biscuit**, **ArmoredSoul, helendemaria, Yes-Man, QuietTimeChocolates, Detective Huckle, Boundless Hearts, Morning Star, itricky, **and **Farren Ouro**. And thank you to everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts. I cannot possibly express how greatly I appreciate your thoughtful support and encouragement. I do hope you enjoy this chapter. ^_^

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Ten The Unwelcome Reunion**

Max had been tempted to protest when Michael suggested that Jack go out to the tack shed. Since the crisis in L.A., she hadn't let her nephew out of her sight…excepting the time he had decided to run off in the middle of the night to visit a dying angel in the desert.

Ugh, the thought itself verged on ridiculous. Something out of a fairy tale, really.

Max shook her head, rejecting what was incomprehensible. Maybe this was all a dream, though she had yet to decide if it was a pleasant delusion or a nightmare. Perhaps, she mused, it was somewhere in-between.

In any case, she wasn't eager to let Jack wander away again, although her worry was somewhat assuaged when she saw Gabriel follow him.

That was a good thing, right? The archangel had sworn to protect them all, hadn't he? And yet, Max was uneasy. On edge.

Talk was cheap. Trust, not so much.

But then she remembered all that Gabriel had done for her the night before. His kindness. And yes, the angel had been kind to her. Tolerant. Gentle, even. Perhaps she _should_ trust him. Perhaps a leap of faith was now in order.

Huh, faith. That didn't come cheap either.

In the end, Max decided to keep her mouth shut. After Jack left with Gabriel, she distracted herself by organizing the last of the canned goods Michael had brought them. Stocking the empty shelves gave her a sense of satisfaction she had long forgotten, and she moved around the kitchen with purpose, pulling the foodstuffs out of the sack on the table only to line them up neatly in the cabinets.

In her hands she held a box of Cheerios, the yellow label smiling up at her, reminding her of Saturday mornings and fluffy bathrobes and corny cartoons. It was the same cereal she and Laurie used to eat for breakfast as kids. She remembered that her sister liked sliced bananas and strawberries with Cheerios, although Max herself had never been that healthy, sticking with sugar instead of fruit in her cereal.

Standing on the tips of her toes so that she could put the box on a high shelf, she experienced an unexpected, yet welcome surge of nostalgia.

This old house, she realized, was starting to feel like a home.

Michael stayed in the kitchen with her, keeping a respectful distance as she went about her work. Having the angel so close by made Max anxious, and although she had somewhat adjusted to Gabriel's presence over the past few days, she was still vaguely uncomfortable.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood up whenever she was around one of them, her legs becoming unsteady, weak as water. It almost felt like having the flu, except instead of slipping into a sluggish delirium, Max's mind was awake, bringing the world into sharp focus. Overwhelming was the word for it. Awful. Not in a terrible way, though, but in the truest sense of the word.

When she was around one of the angels, she was full of awe.

Perhaps Michael realized this, for Max noticed how deliberate his movements were, how careful. He was slow and graceful, standing in one place so as not to startle her.

Max almost wanted to laugh at herself. She'd never been skittish before, but now her vulnerability was evident, something that could not be hidden, something that she would have to learn to live with.

Just as she had learned to accept the sudden intrusion of two archangels into her life.

A tentative smile showed on her face. Michael seemed to pick up on it, his own expression lightening.

"I left some more things for you in the garage," he said, watching as she reached into the sack and withdrew a couple of green pears. "There is can of gasoline for the car and several other items of a…less than benign nature."

Max understood. "Ammo?"

"Bullets for your handgun. I assume you know how to shoot?"

She nodded. "Yeah. I wasn't exactly the best shot on the force, but I can handle my firearm."

Michael's brow smoothed over. He appeared pleased. Relieved, maybe. "It is good that you are so well protected, though I must say, you have nothing to fear as long as my brother resides with you. He is a formidable warrior, to say the very least."

"Yeah, I kinda guessed that."

Max didn't think it was wise to say anything else. She had noticed, of course, that Michael carried a sword with him, although the slender weapon strapped to the angel's hip seemed like a toothpick compared to the mace she had found in Gabriel's possession. When she had first brought the wounded archangel to her home, Max had removed his armor and weapons and stowed them safely away in the crawl space underneath the house. She didn't even want to think of the damage Gabriel could inflict with that…_thing_. It was ugly. An instrument of cruelty that she had never expected an angel to wield. Though then again, wasn't there a passage in the Bible that mentioned an angel with a flaming sword at the Gates of Eden?

Michael stirred and the tiny movement, the shifting of his weight from one foot to the other, brought Max out of her musings.

Her visitor was looking at her with discerning eyes and not for the first time, Max wondered just how much he knew of her and just how deeply he could peer into her soul….

Another shiver traced her spine.

"I must say, I have noticed Gabriel is without his arms and armor," Michael said and his tone was so nonchalant that Max almost didn't notice the subtle question in his voice.

_So much for avoiding the subject, _she thought. _Well, if he's going to be direct, then so will I. _

"Is that a hint?" Max asked, pausing for a moment to lean against the kitchen sink. Her arms were folded across her middle and she gave Michael the same skeptical look she had worn the night of his unexpected visit.

And even though she was thankful for his help and _nearly _ready to trust him, Max wanted him to know that he still couldn't pull a fast one on her. Angel or not.

"I see I cannot mumble through the matter," the archangel said, "or beat around the bush, as you humans would say." His wings rippled as he spoke, though the motion, when coupled with his smile, made Max realize that he was amused, not annoyed.

She let her guard drop…slightly.

"I'd rather not waste my time, or yours, really," she replied. "I'm sure you're a busy guy. I know that God is supposed to be everywhere all at once, but I never heard the same about angels."

Michael grinned and his angular face came alive with something very like boyish mirth. "Your sense of humor has improved since we last met. That pleases me."

Max shrugged. "Whatever gets me through the day. But seriously, let's just cut to the chase here. Tell me what you want."

"If you are going to be that frank," Michael said, inclining his head, "I would like you to return Gabriel's arms and armor to him. He is indeed a warrior and to deprive him of his weapons for such a long period of time is not wise. I know that at first you feared that he might try to harm you, but you see now that his intentions are not the least bit malicious. And you must realize, the world is not yet settled. There is danger still and you are vulnerable, whether you will admit to it or not. My brother _will_ protect you. Please accept his help. It is no insult to your own strength, only a gesture of compassion. Will you do this for me?"

Max squirmed, feeling insecurity settle in her gut along with the last of the bland oatmeal. Was this angel trying to lay a guilt trip on her? If so, he was succeeding. Of course she would do what Michael asked of her. How could she possibly refuse him? After all, he had done so much to help her….

And yet, was it Michael who had really helped her? Was it Michael who had listened to her the night before as she opened her soul and spilled all that was putrid and wicked from it in an effort to cleanse her spiritual sickness? Was it Michael who had taken her for what she was and looked beyond her sins into the small goodness that was left within her heart? Was it Michael who had held her in his arms, embraced her, a filthy, disgusting leper, consoled her and comforted her…

…in his arms, in his arms.

Max felt her eyes burn. She blinked and stared at the nearly empty sack on the table. "Yeah, I'll do it for you," she told Michael, "and for Gabriel."

"Thank you," the angel said and now his bearing seemed to relax a little, a burden falling from his narrow shoulders. "And I know Gabriel will be pleased. He very much wishes to help you. After all, you have been kind…"

Max whirled away from him, drumming her fingertips on the chilled porcelain of the sink. "Not that I'm complaining or anything," she said, "but how long do you think Gabriel will be staying with us?"

"You object to his company?" A note of tension jumped into Michael's voice.

Still not looking at him, Max shook her head. "No, not at all. That's not what I meant. I only thought it would be helpful to get a timeframe. I like to have an idea of what's going on. Maybe it's the cop in me."

Behind her, she heard Michael exhale. Had she finally annoyed him? Had she angered him by being too inquisitive and questioning his plans? Gabriel had been upset with her yesterday morning when she had refused to hand over his weapons. And although Max liked to talk tough, liked to pretend that she had a sizable chip on her shoulder, she was terribly afraid of invoking the archangel's wrath. Who knew what a creature like that could do to her.

But then Michael made a soft noise in the back of his throat that sounded like a chuckle and Max relaxed once more.

How very different the two brothers were, she thought. And how very different she had been from Laurie…

"I am sorry," Michael said at length, "but I cannot give you a definite answer." A pause, and then, "Does that trouble you?"

Max turned away from the sink and looked at him. "No, not really," she said, although she couldn't rid herself of the nagging worry that had lodged itself in the back of her mind.

Could an angel tell when she was lying? Probably.

Max bit back a sigh of her own. The truth was, it bothered her not knowing when Gabriel would leave them, and since the night before, she had found herself wondering just when he would depart. Would it happen when she least expected it? Would she come into the living room one day and find him gone, the echo of his presence remaining in her memory alone? Or would he perhaps say goodbye to them before he left?

Even now, Max imagined the scene, standing with the huge angel outside the house, shaking his hand, whispering an awkward farewell, watching him spread his dark wings and catch the current of the wind and disappear, just disappear from her life forever.

She didn't know why, but for some reason, the thought made her sad.

"Well," she said, drawing some air into her lungs as she returned her attention back to the foodstuffs. "He's welcome to stay. Jack seems to like him and…"

"And what about you?" Michael pressed. He took a step forward and braced his arms on a kitchen chair. Light came in from the window and reflected off his black metal breastplate and the strange, sinister iron collar around his neck. "I hope he has not been harsh with you."

Max paused in the act of fumbling through the sack, two cans of peas tucked under her right arm. "Uh, no. Gabriel, he's…he's fine," she replied.

"I will admit, he has not been entirely accepting of your kind, unlike myself," Michael continued. Deep lines crossed his brow as he frowned. "I was the first in all of Heaven to bow down before Man. Gabriel, however, has struggled with humanity's failings."

Max put the peas on the counter behind her and forced herself to look Michael in the eyes. "I know," she said. "I know all about that. Gabriel told me how he was ordered to kill a mother and her child because you would not. He said he would have gone through with it too."

"And it does not bother you to hear such a thing?"

Max felt her spine go rigid. She did not think she could possibly tell Michael all that had passed between her and Gabriel the night before, could not bear to relate her story again and confess all the terrible things she had done.

Perhaps, she mused, Michael already knew of her secrets. But either way, she felt that her time with Gabriel was sacred, a moment shared between them and them alone. It was something she wanted to keep inside her. A memory. A tiny treasure hoarded in a questionable, dark world.

And so Max shrugged and dropped her eyes and pretended to look through the sack once more. "I don't know. I guess not."

Michael said nothing for a long time, but kept his hands braced on the back of his chair, the tattoos on his knuckles showing up black as coal against his pale skin.

And Max had a million things she wanted to ask him. Why he and his brother had fought to the point of death. Why they were both here now and what their intentions were. Why she felt some strange sense of communion with Gabriel, as though they were more alike than they were different….

But for some reason, Max knew she wouldn't like the answers she'd receive. Best to keep quiet and keep her head down. Best to ignore what she felt and what she thought and focus only on Jack and keeping him safe.

Best not to feel or think or wonder at all.

As she stood there, Max became aware of the old St. Michael medal hanging around her neck. Her hand went to it and she grasped the chain, pulling it until it dug into her skin. With a sharp tug, she broke the clasp.

Michael stared at her, his eyes narrowed. "Max?"

"I think I should take this off," she said, her voice thin. "It's kind of weird to be wearing this old thing, especially with you standing right in front of me." She held out the medal. "Here."

Michael looked at the old medal and then looked at her and a small smile folded his lips.

"Keep it," he said, "to protect you when I myself cannot."

Max didn't understand him. Holding the medal in her hand, feeling it grow hot in her palm, she realized that she never wanted to.

The warmth soon spread from her hand and up to her arm until all the blood rushed to her face, leaving her flushed. Max put the medal down on the table, but then thought better of it and slipped the broken chain into her back pocket.

"I should probably go into the garage and gas up the squad car," she mumbled. "I didn't want to tell Jack, but we were riding on vapors there for a while."

She stepped around the table and was about to move past Michael when she heard the low whine of an old engine coming up the drive.

Her heart dropped straight down to her toes.

"Is that…do you hear that?" Max asked the angel.

Michael didn't say a word, but quickly stepped towards the window over the sink. He lifted back the dingy blue curtains with one hand and peered outside. For a moment, the sun was on his face and the brilliance of the light when it reached his eyes was so intense Max had to look away.

Aside from the wings, it was the eyes that really set the angels apart. She didn't quite remember what color Gabriel's eyes were. Something light. Light and cold.

But they were terrible, his eyes. Terrible and beautiful in a way that was hard to understand, even when he looked right at her.

Michael let the curtains fall back into place as he stepped away from the window. The sound of the engine was closer now, almost up to the front of the house.

"Is someone coming?" Max asked him.

Michael half-turned, glancing over his shoulder at her. "Yes," he said, and for the first time, Max thought she heard something of weariness in his voice.

But then she remembered that Jack was outside in the tack shed with Gabriel….

"Where'd you put the bullets?" Max asked even as she shouldered her way through the door and into the garage.

The angel was on her heels. "Max, wait. There is no reason to-"

But she didn't hear him. The roar of the engine had diminished, only to be replaced by a chorus of shouts.

And just outside the garage, just outside the house, she heard Gabriel's voice, raised and commanding. "Put your weapon away," he ordered. "Put it away now!"

And Max didn't think, only reached for her gun.

* * *

Standing in the open doorway of the shed, Gabriel felt the muscles in his neck tighten, his jaw clenching as he watched the young man help the woman and her child down from the cab.

The sight was enough to put venom in his veins. Enough to harden his living, beating heart into unbending iron.

He had hoped (in vain, perhaps) that he would never again cross paths with these two humans. They were both a potent reminder of his failure, and for no other reason, for no higher purpose, he hated them.

Hate was a strong emotion. Definite. Firm. Solid as stone. It closed around Gabriel's mind, severing what impartial ties he had until he knew only black anger and regret and shame.

And the shame, he decided, was the worst of it.

As if responding to his renewed rage, the wind stirred, coming down off the mountains in sharp gusts that whispered through the low, dry shrubs. Rattled them like hollow bones.

He could have killed these humans. Killed them without a shred of regret. What had stopped him? Certainly not pity.

A small part of him, a remnant of his stoic logic, told him that it was irrational to pin his own faults on those who were blameless. But were these people really blameless?

In a way, yes.

They had not driven Michael to disobedience. They had not rained war and chaos down upon the helpless. They had not caused Gabriel to fail in his duty for the first time in his existence.

The error lay with him, and yet, he could not accept it.

This man and woman, he reasoned, these people, were human. They had participated in the active pollution of their race, perverting and destroying the Father's gift of life until the most sacred creation was a ruin. They were foul and wicked and dangerous.

They were human.

_Human. _His mind played with the word. _Human._

Max and Jack were human. Max and Jack who had saved his life, who had sheltered him in their own home. Nursed him. Cared for him….

And it was Jack who stood beside him now, his eyes still stained with tears, his entire being, his soul, relying on trust alone…trust in Gabriel.

The nature of humanity was indeed an awful paradox, the angel decided. Not something of good and evil. Only truth, in all its callous reality.

Neither Max, nor Jack, nor the man, nor the woman were evil.

Only human.

And even though he was once again tempted to feel revulsion, a fleeting memory passed through Gabriel's mind. He thought of Max and how it had felt to hold her in his arms.

A strange, strange thing….

With no little difficulty, Gabriel cleared his mind, rolling his shoulders until the skin around his wound was shot through with fire.

The man and woman were walking towards the house, quite oblivious to his presence so nearby. Gabriel realized that he could easily avoid them, although evasion had never been quite to his taste. It felt vaguely like cowardice to duck his head under his wing and hide like a docile dove.

No, that would certainly not suit him. Best to head into battle with unwavering determination. Best to lead the charge and start things on his own terms.

Moving out of the shed, he did not realize at first that Jack was still lingering in his shadow.

"Hey, Gabriel," the boy said, struggling to keep up with the angel's long strides. "Who are they? Do you know them?"

Gabriel paused, and despite the building tension, he managed to find a small smile for Jack. "Yes, I do know them," he replied. "But I think it would be best if you stayed in the shed until I have had a chance to speak with them. Will you do that for me?"

Jack nodded and wiped his runny nose on his sleeve. "Yeah, yeah I will."

"Good." Gabriel turned from the child. The new arrivals had paused just outside the garage. Their body language was awkward, their shoulders hunched and stiff, legs locked. Every movement spoke of trepidation and uncertainty.

Ironically, the angel himself felt a measure of diluted apprehension wash over him, and without meaning to, he slowed his step. The man had his back to him, and for a moment, Gabriel struggled to remember his name.

Michael had said it, hadn't he?

Although he tried to ignore what memories he had of the desperate fight with his brother at the diner, he now forced himself to recall what details he could, even the seemingly trivial.

Gabriel's remembrances of that night were scattered. Pictures of violence and blood and much sorrow. He recalled the man screaming after he had gutted his father with the razor tips of his wings.

_Dad!_

And then Michael stepping forward, restraining the hysterical human.

_Jeep, no!_

Ah yes. Jeep. That was it. And the woman's name? Charlie, perhaps. He wasn't certain.

Gabriel quickened his pace as he moved up the dirt path leading from the shed to the garage, his resolve fortified by purpose.

Jeep still did not hear him coming, still did not turn around to look at him. He was too concerned with Charlie and her child. The infant was wailing in his mother's arms, roused by the brisk, cold air that came sweeping down from the mountains. God's icy breath.

The humans fussed over the babe, their movements fluttery. They did not notice when the shadow of the archangel fell over them.

Near as he was to them now, he noted how very bedraggled they were in appearance. Jeep still had on the same old t-shirt he had worn at the diner, although the fabric was stained with blood and sweat and faint traces of motor oil. Charlie, on the other hand, was bundled up in a heavy coat, her halo of golden hair spilling over the hood in a tangled mess.

Neither of them looked as though they had slept in days. Parenthood, obviously, did not suit them.

Gabriel made an indistinct noise in the back of his throat, hoping to gently stir them from their distraction and catch their attention. He expected them to be startled, frightened even. Perhaps they would cower once they saw him. Perhaps they would try to run away.

The notion amused Gabriel. They would certainly never guess that the angel who had once been sent to kill them had no intention of hurting a single hair on either of their heads.

"Jeep," he said, addressing the man in a voice that he hoped was indifferent.

The man whirled around, his hand flying to his belt as he reached for the firearm strapped to his side.

Charlie screamed and the baby joined his mother, supplementing her shrieks with a shrill, hiccupping cry of his own.

Jeep had his gun out and although his aim was shaky, he managed to point it somewhere just below Gabriel's head.

_So much for Max being a poor shot_, the angel thought wryly. _She is certainly not alone._

And although it went against his every inclination, against what he felt and what he thought and what he wanted for himself, Gabriel decided he ought to try and diffuse their anxiety. Agitating the humans further would be of little use, and in truth, he was nothing if not a practical being.

"Peace," Gabriel said. Mimicking the pacifying gestures Michael had previously used to get Max to lower her own weapon, he raised his hands slowly for Jeep to see. "I have no intention of harming you or your woman." He paused, considered his words, and then added, "Or the child."

Jeep's eyes locked with his. The arm holding the gun strengthened and he extended his elbow, pointing the barrel directly at Gabriel's forehead. "Charlie," he said slowly, still not turning his gaze from the angel, "run. Now."

But the woman was frozen with fear. She took a weak step backwards and stumbled on the uneven terrain, her scuffed sneakers slipping on the gravel. In her arms, the infant continued to wail.

The noise was strangely grating to Gabriel. It echoed in his ears and filled his gut with shards of ice. How truly awful it was to hear a child cry from fear.

And how terrible it made him feel when he realized that the babe was frightened of _him_.

He remembered reaching for the child not so long ago, his motives framed not with ill intent, but only his desire to please the Father. It would not have been the first time he had killed an innocent. The children of Egypt had borne witness to that when the last of the plagues was visited upon them.

But then Gabriel felt his control snap back into place and he steeled himself against sentiment. Logic returned and he told himself, _reassured_ himself, that the child could not possibly be afraid of him because the babe was only a week old. No memories could yet exist within his mind, no fear, no judgment. No understanding of what had happened or what was to come.

The child was simply cold.

Gabriel lifted his chin and looked beyond Jeep at Charlie. "The air is brisk," he said to her. "You should find proper swaddling for him."

As it was, the babe was wrapped in what looked like an old dish towel, something evidently scavenged from a backroom at the diner.

Charlie stared at him blankly and took another step towards the truck.

"That is not necessary," Gabriel said. He turned his gaze to Jeep. "You are safe here. You will not be harmed. Please, put your weapon away."

In response, the man's finger tightened on the trigger. "Fuck you."

Gabriel raised a brow. "Do not be foolish," he said, his voice sharpening. "Put your weapon away. Put it away now!"

And he knew that despite his attempts at pacification, that Jeep probably would have shot him, or at least would have tried to had Max not come rushing out of the house.

She threw the garage door open and the grinding sound it made as it rolled back on the tracks was enough to startle them all.

"Shit!" Jeep cried and he fell back, lowering his gun.

Charlie shrieked again, but the child, surprisingly, fell silent.

"Drop your weapon!" Max had her own firearm clutched in her hands, and unlike Jeep, her arm didn't tremble as she took aim. "Drop the gun now and put your hands in the air. Lemme see your hands. I wanna see your hands!"

The veteran police officer was back, Gabriel noted, as he watched Max bear down on Jeep. Whatever softness she might have shown him the night before, whatever pitiful weakness she had possessed was now gone and what remained was hard. Unforgiving. Her shoulders were set in a straight line and the veins by her temples bulged as blood and adrenalin rushed through his body.

Max was alive with burning energy. She kept her gun trained on Jeep, her finger hovering near the trigger.

"I wanna see your hands," she ordered.

Jeep faltered as he looked at her, his grip on his gun loosening. "No way, lady," he said, a tremor infected his voice. "Just cause you got that fancy badge pinned to your chest doesn't mean I have to listen to you."

Max growled. "You're on my property, kid. The law says I could blow you away." And as if to prove her point, she clicked the safety off.

"We gotta get out of here," Charlie mumbled. "This is the wrong place, Jeep. Michael must've told us the wrong place."

Gabriel hearkened to her words, his attention suddenly snagged and focused on Charlie.

Michael…Michael…what could he possibly have to do with this?

The arrival of his brother, however, interrupted his ruminations. With preternatural speed, the archangel darted out of the garage and placed himself directly between Max and Jeep. Before either of the humans could move, he had spread his wings to their full span, creating a rather effective bullet-proof shield. With one hand, Michael grabbed Max's wrist and squeezed.

"Put your gun away now, Max," he said and although his entrance had been dramatic, his voice was soft. Casually, he glanced over his shoulder at Jeep. "You as well. There is no need for violence."

"Wait!" Jeep took a staggering step forward. "What about him?" He jerked his head in Gabriel's direction.

Michael shifted, turning so that he could look at Jeep fully. "Gabriel will not harm you. I swear it. You have my word."

And as his brother spoke, Gabriel alone heard the warning in his voice. A warning meant for _him_.

"That is true," he said, more to reassure Michael than Jeep.

His brother nodded his thanks. " I daresay we all have had enough of bloodshed," he said. "Come. Disarm yourselves. There should be peace between us all."

Gabriel barely refrained from scoffing at his brother's suggestion. As weak as Michael's argument might seem to him, it did affect Jeep. The man stuck his gun back into the old holster strapped to his belt and showed the angel his hands.

"All right, Michael," he said.

Max, however, had to be forcefully separated from her firearm. Gabriel saw his brother place a fair amount of pressure on her wrist, and at last, the woman dropped her weapon, groaning as she did so.

Michael released her arm, bending forward to snatch up her gun before she could reach for it.

And although tension still gripped her limbs, Max now had the look of a punished child. She stared up at Michael, and even from a distance, Gabriel could feel the raw anger in her gaze.

_Perhaps she realizes now why I was so displeased to be deprived of my own weapons_, he thought, even though he felt something of very real pity stirring within him.

Poor Max. She was undeniably beaten.

Michael seemed to understand this and he rested his hand on her shoulder, a passing smile creasing his lips.

"Do not be afraid," he said, "these people are friends."

"With weapons," Max spat back at him. "On _my_ property."

"I'm sorry." Now it was Jeep's turn to look bashful. He stood next to Charlie, one arm wrapped protectively around her shoulders. "We didn't mean to scare you or nothing."

Max ignored him and looked instead to Gabriel. "Where's Jack?" she asked. There was a hint of worry in her tone, her maternal instinct present even though she herself was not a mother.

Gabriel understood. "Safe," he replied.

Max nodded, satisfied, her chest heaving as she sighed in relief. It was Michael she addressed when she next spoke and Gabriel was surprised when he saw her step back from his brother, pulling away from the hand that rested on her shoulder.

"Who are they?" she questioned icily.

Michael, as always, was patient. "Friends," he repeated. "Jeep, Charlie." He beckoned them forward. "This is Maxine Quinn. She is a police officer from Los Angeles."

Jeep and Charlie both looked like they were about to offer Max a sheepish greeting when she wheeled around, placing her back to them.

"I don't care about names," she grunted, throwing her hand up in annoyance. "I just want to know what they're doing here."

There was silence for a beat and Max paced, the early afternoon sun casting watery light over the valley, reflecting as it hit the badge on her chest at just the right angle.

Gabriel sympathized with Max's frustration. He himself had a few questions he wanted to put to his brother and as the minutes dragged by, suspicion mounted within him.

Michael had told Jeep and Charlie where Max lived. Why?

The answer, he realized, would probably not be a favorable one.

The fitful quiet was broken when Jeep cleared his throat with a hacking cough. "Hey, it seems like we got off on the wrong foot here," he said, his drawling voice thin and cracking. "Like I said, I'm sorry for scaring you, Miss Quinn-"

Max wheeled on him, staring at the young man over the crook of Michael's expansive right wing. "Officer Quinn, kid. Although I suppose that doesn't stand for much anymore."

"Yeah." Jeep dug the toe of his shoe into the gritty earth. "Yeah. I understand where you're coming from."

"Do you?" Max prompted. Her eyebrows darted upward, nearly disguised by the fringe of her messy bangs.

When Jeep didn't answer, she turned to Michael. "You said you knew them."

Michael nodded and slowly, he let his wings drop, leaving only the cold, clear air between the humans.

"I do," he said.

Gabriel watched his brother with undisguised curiosity. There was something of painful restraint about him and his words were guarded. Careful. Precise.

Michael wasn't telling Max the whole truth, that much was obvious. Annoyance stirred within Gabriel, a tiny pinprick of impatience puncturing his control. Max's irritation was overwhelming, infectious, and it rubbed against his own sense of self-possession like hot sand. Harsh to the touch. Unsettling. It was a sharp rock lodged in the smooth silt of a riverbed. A disturbance. And he was bothered by it. Troubled.

To relieve some of his internal discomfort, he stepped closer to her.

"You know these people," Gabriel told Max, supplying information when Michael clearly would not. "I told you of them last night."

Something in his voice must have set Jeep and Charlie on high alert once more. They were both huddled together near their truck, the child pressed between them.

Max looked at them and shook her head, her lips folding back in an incredulous grimace. "You've gotta be kidding me. These are the people you told me about, Gabriel? The ones from the diner? The mother and kid you were sent to kill?"

Charlie inhaled sharply and Jeep stared at his feet.

Michael, on the other hand, seemed increasingly uncomfortable. "Brother," he said. There was a subtle hint of remonstrance in his tone.

Gabriel was adamant. "She deserves to know," he replied. "This is not a game, Michael. Would you have Max remain in the shadows while we linger in the light of the truth?"

Michael said nothing, but Gabriel noticed his limbs go rigid, his wings tensing.

"Yeah, well, that's what I want to hear," Max said. "The truth. Can someone please tell what the hell these people are doing here? Because I know I didn't invite them…I've never even seen them before-"

"We need your help," Jeep blurted out. His sad, puppy-dog eyes were wide, as if even he was surprised by his outburst.

Michael glanced at him and Gabriel could have sworn he saw a flicker of reassurance and encouragement in his brother's gaze as he stared at the human.

Comprehension dawned on him then, and he recognized the understanding between the two, an understanding fostered by some secret knowledge or motivation.

Michael knew something and Jeep knew something and Charlie knew something.

Max, however, did not.

"My help?" she sputtered. "What could you possibly want from me, kid?"

Jeep didn't respond, but his eyes, along with Charlie's, trailed to the house, the house that was even now casting a long, dark shadow over them all.

And as if by instinct, the baby in Charlie's arms began to wail.

"Can we talk?" Jeep asked.

Max seemed on the verge of refusing him when Michael overrode her, his face and voice and bearing laboring under some delusion of hospitality.

"Yes," he said. "I think that would be best."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I'd absolutely love to hear from you.

In the next chapter, Jeep and Charlie explain themselves to Max and beg for her help. Gabriel remains rightfully suspicious of their sudden reappearance and begins to wonder if his brother Michael might have ulterior motives.

Chapter Eleven is in the works and should be posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!


	11. Chapter Eleven Uninvited

**Author's Note: **Whew! Another chapter finished. As always, I want to thank everyone who has taken the time to read this story so far and those that reviewed, **QuietTimeChocolates, little biscuit, Farren Ouro, moondawntreader, Yes-Man, Morning Star, ****Fyrefly **and **AsheBriannaSerenity. **And I'd also like to thank all those readers who added this story to their favorite's/author alerts lists. You guys are the best! I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Eleven Uninvited **

The house was silent, save for the sound of water starting to boil in the tea kettle on the stove. Gabriel was standing in the kitchen and he kept his eyes trained on the silver spout where steam bloomed and puffed and fogged up the window over the sink.

Max had positioned herself near the stove and she stood with her hips tilted, the angle suggesting discomfort and annoyance and intense frustration. Her arms were folded across her middle, just below her breasts, and Gabriel noticed that even though her hands hung limply by her sides, the right one was still close to the empty gun holster on her belt.

Old habits were almost never broken. He could tell that Max was just itching to have her gun in her hand.

Michael, however, wouldn't relent. He kept the firearm with him still and stood apart from Max by the bay windows in the living room. His wings, although folded neatly behind his back, blocked the afternoon light that filtered in through the glass panes, casting irregular shadows on the carpeted floor.

Jack had been called in from his exile in the tack shed and promptly dispatched by his aunt to the rocking chair. And there he sat, his diminutive frame looking all the more gangly and scrawny against the loud colors of the crocheted throw that was draped over the back of the chair. The boy's tiny mouth was pressed into a trembling frown and from where he stood, Gabriel could still make out the tear tracks that marred his cheeks and trailed down to his jaw.

Jack's chatty congeniality had all but disappeared only to be replaced by a grave silence. He did not attempt to make conversation with the new arrivals.

As if by instinct, Charlie and Jeep had gravitated towards Michael. They had arranged themselves on the sofa close by him and they looked for all the world like a pair of nesting birds clinging to a branch in the middle of a gale, their ever so precious egg pressed safely between them.

Seeing the frightened young couple huddled together only heightened the utter improbability of the situation. Gabriel thought they all looked like fools, himself included, and perhaps they all_ were_ fools.

All of them except Max, who only begrudgingly gave into whatever hospitable urges she possessed.

The steam was pouring from the kettle's spout in a vaporous flood now, emitting a shriek that sounded rudely in Gabriel's ears. Max let the kettle whistle for a solid minute before she tore her attention away from her company and lifted it off the burner.

"Coffee?" she offered coldly, although there was a heavy hint of morbid sarcasm in her voice.

Jeep cleared his throat. "Yeah. That…that would be just great."

Max responded by pulling two mugs out of a cabinet underneath the counter. "Obviously, we don't have any sugar or milk," she said.

"That's fine," Jeep answered. A pause, then, "Hey, can I help you in the kitchen or something?"

Gabriel looked towards Max and was surprised when she laughed. It was a low, desperate sound, something that he alone recognized as a sign of disgust.

"The coffee's instant, kid," Max told him as she carried the two mugs into the living room. "I don't need anyone to help me pour water."

Jeep took both mugs from her and turned to Charlie, who obviously found it awkward to hold her hot coffee and her baby all at once. After a moment of confused fumbling, Jeep set the second mug down on the table untouched.

"So Michael," Max said, perching herself on the arm of Jack's rocking chair, "what exactly are we supposed to talk about?"

_Indeed,_ Gabriel thought. Almost compulsively, he moved out of the kitchen and into the living room, intending to stand closer to Jack and Max in a modest attempt to offer his silent support. But his approach startled Jeep and Charlie and the two humans scrambled away from him, sliding all the way over to the other side of the sofa near Michael.

"I know what we can talk about," Charlie said, her voice a nervous warble, "we can talk about why he's here. I want to know, Michael. He tried to kill us."

Michael turned his head in her direction, his normally creased brow smoothed by an expression of calm sympathy. "I understand your fear," he said, "but I promise you, your worries are unfounded. Gabriel only-"

"Gabriel was only bleeding to death in the desert when I found him," Max interjected. She was standing again, her right hand now hooked over the empty holster on her belt. "We found him in a dried-up gully about a week ago when we first got down here from L.A. and we took him home with us to take care of his injuries. Do you have a problem with that, Carly?"

"It's Charlie," the woman corrected. "And no, I don't have a problem with it. Only this guy killed my friends in cold blood. He tried to kill my baby. He-"

"He murdered my father," Jeep said and his voice was soft when he spoke. A low murmur. A single pebble dropped into a deep ocean.

And even though Gabriel felt no shame for killing Jeep's father, even though his heart would never labor under remorse, he hated having his misdeeds named aloud for all to hear.

He wouldn't feel guilty, he wouldn't feel accountable, but he would feel alone. Singled out. Isolated.

There was silence for a moment and Charlie allowed Jeep to collect himself before she rattled on.

"He killed Jeep's father," she said at length, her chin jutting out in some misplaced sign of defiance directed at Max. "And did I mention that he attempted to rip the roof of our squad car while we were making our escape? That's what I have a problem with. So how about you drop the big bad cop attitude for a moment and let _me_ explain a few things to you…or better yet, let Gabriel tell you."

Had he been less in control of his emotions and not practiced in stoic detachment, Gabriel might have very well been tempted to explain a few things to Charlie himself. But he was certainly not beholden to impulsion, and instead, he took the woman's words for what they were. A dumb reaction. A primitive, ineffective tongue-lashing.

Her sharp barbs were dull by the time they struck him, little bee stings on his already armored flesh. Gabriel paid little mind to what Charlie said of him. After all, it truly was of no consequence, and if the woman knew the truth of the matter, if she understood in the way only celestial beings could, then perhaps she would be more inclined to keep her profane mouth shut.

Max, apparently, was also not impressed. "I know all about that, sweetheart," she said, quirking an eyebrow in challenge as she spoke. "But what I really want to know is how you got hold of a police cruiser. Did you steal it off some hick sheriff's deputy?"

Max's speech was rapid-fire, her words veritable bullets that she aimed at Charlie. Her resentment was bitter. Gabriel himself could almost taste it, could almost feel the prickly sensation of antipathy that brought a sheen of sweat to her brow, that stirred the bile in her gut.

She was angry and for a moment, Gabriel felt her very human rage extend and envelop him.

But her fury was too volatile. Too unstable. He withdrew and turned his mind away from her, hardened his heart and tried to retain some semblance of his objectivity.

It was dangerous, after all, to feel what a human felt.

Max, on the other hand, was entirely unaware of his sympathy. She had the look of a cornered beast. All raised hackles and bared teeth.

"Aren't you going to answer me?" she asked Charlie, throwing a challenge of her own back at her. "Where'd you get the cruiser?"

Charlie's eyes smoldered. "None of your damn business."

"I don't care," Max ground out. "I want to know."

"Enough." Michael stepped forward, asserting his dominating presence once more. "That's quite enough from both of you."

And despite himself, Gabriel flinched hearing such weighty words fall from his brother's lips.

_Enough. It's enough._

Yes, perhaps it was enough.

Charlie lowered her head, looking to her child, although Gabriel suspected she was trying to hide the humiliation that rose to her cheeks in a flush of color. Max too retreated, albeit very reluctantly. She stood by Jack and after a moment of casting her eyes around, she set her gaze on Gabriel.

Their eyes locked and for a fleeting instant, the angel almost felt like apologizing to her.

But when he ponder the why of the urge, a sliver of fear worked its way into his stony heart.

_Too close_, he thought. _Too close._

And Gabriel tried to ignore her. Tried to pull away. Tried to sever the slender thread of sympathy and understanding that united them. But God, _God_, it was becoming difficult.

Dragging his attention away from the beleaguered Max, he forced himself to focus on his brother, his only tie to home and his life as he knew it. His only reminder of blessed sanity.

Michael had taken charge of the situation once more and he stood in the center of the living room, the chief prince, the commander of Heaven's holy host. And yet when he addressed the humans, he voice was earnest and gentle and without a trace of assumed superiority. Only humility. Pure and light. True and constant.

The Father had made Michael humble, Gabriel reflected, although the trait was both a blessing and an occasional hindrance. Sometimes, it seemed as though his brother blurred the line between the human and angelic, the earthly and the celestial. Gabriel, however, prided himself on knowing the difference between the two.

And yet, he was sometimes plagued by sudden waves of doubt. Horrible, unfathomable doubt.

The difference, did he truly know what the difference was anymore?

There had been no difference, after all, when he had held Max in his arms….

_Never mind. _He set his jaw. _Never mind. _

Gabriel watched as Michael moved among the humans, offering Charlie and Jeep a look of reproach tempered by reassurance, offering Max a steadying smile.

"There is no cause for division between us," he said. "Charlie and Jeep, I understand your fear of Gabriel. It was, at a time, not irrational. I also understand that his actions to you are unforgivable. But please consider, he only did what I myself refused to do. The order was mine and I disobeyed. He did not act according to his own morals or even his own will."

Michael paused, his neck arching slightly, his head snapping back, as if he only now realized the true meaning of his words. But his hesitation was nearly imperceptible, something Gabriel alone saw and appreciated. When his brother spoke again, his voice was even.

"Gabriel holds no ill will against you.," he said. "He only did as he was told. And now, he has been instructed not to harm you. Therefore, I would ask that you put him from your minds if you can. There is much grief and anger in your hearts, that I know, but you must not to direct it at Gabriel. What he has done is neither wrong nor right. It is above and beyond judgment. He is but a shadow in these matters. A Messenger. Do you understand all this?"

Jeep shifted, the springs of the sofa creaking as he moved. "But how can we be sure?" he asked Michael. "How do we know his orders won't be changed and he'll turn against us?"

Gabriel was about to interrupt, to interject his opinion into a conversation that seemed to concern him but in which he was not invited to partake.

His brother, however, leapt to his defense.

"When have I ever spoken a false word to you?" he asked both Jeep and Charlie. "When have I deceived you? There are things that are beyond you, certainly you realize this. I would ask you to leave this matter to me. Put Gabriel from your minds. Ignore him, if you must. We have more important matters to attend to."

"Yeah." Max was leaning against the arm of Jack's chair again. "I've gotta tell you," she said, "I'm not entirely satisfied with the explanations I've been given. More matter, less art. That's from Hamlet, you know."

A rare smile lifted Gabriel's lips. How very like Max to spout Shakespeare at the most unlikely moment. She was a mystery, this woman, one that thoroughly intrigued him. If he ever had the chance, he would certainly have to ask her just when she had found the time to read the scribblings of that bawdy English bard.

But then he remembered how dangerous curiosity was, how tempting. It would be best, perhaps, if he knew absolutely nothing of Max at all.

Nothing at all.

But did he know too much already?

Gabriel's heart smacked against his ribs, bringing a lump into his throat. No. He didn't know anything, he couldn't possibly, couldn't possibly….

His knuckles whitened as he tightened them into fists. This was getting dangerous. His mind was beginning to wander into darkness.

But then Michael spoke and reality returned, bringing with it some uneasy sense of comfort and questionable reason.

"Indeed," his brother said and there was a hint of mirth in his voice too when he addressed Max. "You will undoubtedly notice how very direct Officer Quinn is," he told Jeep and Charlie. "Perhaps it would be best if you explain yourselves to her."

"I'd appreciate that," Max added, her grey eyes narrowed as she observed her guests.

Jeep cleared his throat nervously and took a sip of his coffee. The baby was fussing and Charlie rocked the child in her arms, humming faintly.

"Go on," she prodded Jeep. "You can probably tell it better than I can."

"And by the way," Max put in, "I really don't want to hear what happened at the diner again, so you can do us all a favor and skip that part, all right kid?"

"In other words, more matter, less art," Jeep replied and a steely note sounded in his normally drawling tone. "Y'know, just cause I grew up in a trailer doesn't mean I never picked up a book in my life. You don't have to talk to me like I'm some punk you're about to bust, okay?"

Max shrugged and Gabriel was surprised when he noticed a trace of concession about her. For a moment, she seemed to reconsider herself.

"Sorry," she said gruffly. "It's an old habit and it's hard to break."

Jeep nodded, acknowledging her apology. "I understand."

There was a beat of silence. Max appeared uncomfortable. She dropped her arms to her sides, her fingers cracking as she clenched and unclenched her hands into fists.

"You were saying?" she prompted.

Jeep looked abashed. He rubbed the back of his sunburned neck, his lips tightening in a grimace. "Yeah, I was saying. Well, since you don't want to hear what happened at the diner, I'm guessing you don't want to hear about Gabriel attacking our police car-"

"Which you got _how_?" Max interrupted, her features tightening in a reflection of deep mistrust and suspicion.

This time, Michael answered her. "I stole it while I was in Los Angeles," he said simply. "I shot a police officer to get it. I am sorry. I hope he was not a colleague of yours."

The air stilled, a general hush pervading the room until it became crypt-like. Gabriel glanced at Max, wondering just how she would take this news. For some reason, he was perversely pleased to know that his brother had his own dark secrets, his own misdeeds which showed themselves as tarnished and flawed when brought into the light of day.

They were none of them innocent.

The moment of brittle tension seemed to last forever. Max shifted, her shoes making a muffled noise as they dragged along the carpet.

"Fuck," she muttered and said nothing more.

Gabriel saw her bite her lip, saw the veins in her neck bulge as she struggled with unexpected emotion, as she tried to maintain the tenuous control she had over all her doubts and fears.

And in that moment, he found he felt terribly sorry for her.

But as quickly as she had showed her weak underbelly, Max regained her composure, her face taking on an expression that was neutral if not a bit hardened.

"Go ahead," she rasped at the visitors.

Jeep looked at Michael and when the angel nodded, he plowed ahead.

"After all…well, after all that happened, the three of us, that is, Charlie, the baby and me, we went up to Red Ridge National Park."

"Red Ridge?" Max tilted her head to the side as she questioned him. "That's at least a couple of hours away from here."

"Yeah." Jeep planted his elbows on his knees, the sharp blades of his shoulders showing underneath his thin t-shirt. "I don't know if you heard, but people were gathering there. Those that weren't affected-possessed-tried to form some sort of militia. Tried to band together. It was all over by the time we got there, though. No more attacks. They still had some kind of campsite set up and a field hospital. People kept coming in droves, some of them had been hurt real bad. There was almost no food or water. Charlie and me stayed there for three days, but that's when things started to get rough. There was no place to bury the bodies of the dead, and you know, you don't need much to start spreading disease. Some people left and we thought about going too, but then-" Jeep paused suddenly and shook his head as if his voice had deserted him.

Gabriel's ears pricked up. He was almost certain that the human was about to allude to a visit from Michael. And although he had only a few pieces of the puzzle, Gabriel knew that his brother must have guided Charlie and Jeep to Max. It was no wonder, after all, considering that he had brought such a bounty of food and supplies to the house that morning…a bounty that would more likely feed several people instead of just two.

Gabriel frowned, working a muscle in his jaw in a vain attempt to relieve the overwhelming frustration that had descended upon him. He became aware of his pulse and how it beat out a strong cadence in his chest, reverberating up his torso and throughout his body until it ticked steadily in the bulging vein by his right temple. He felt thoroughly unsettled and his wings fluttered, a physical manifestation of his unease.

Something was wrong. Instinct had reared its head, persistent and promising, driving his thoughts in a direct line until his mind was entirely focused.

He was a hound on the hunt and now he had scented blood. He was a keen-eyed hawk soaring above the desert who had sighted his prey. He was determined and cunning and relentless. The question that had bloomed in his mind when Jeep and Charlie had first arrived came to life now. Yes, there was just too much left to coincidence….

Michael, he knew, must certainly be watching over Charlie and Jeep. He had given his life to protect the child, had seen the babe, the new savior, brought safely into the waiting world. But his task was not yet complete, no…the child needed to reach adulthood before he could lead mankind out of darkness once more. And the tiny infant could not possibly survive without protection, could not endure the chaos of a broken world without someone to shelter him.

And Charlie and Jeep had nothing save the clothes on their backs. But Max, yes, Max had everything.

Gabriel wanted to join the conversation and air his suspicions directly, but something made him hold his tongue. His role in these proceedings was that of a spectator, not a participant, and he knew that it was not his place to interfere. Not now, at least. Not now.

Max, however, was smart enough to take the lead instead.

"I'm listening, kid, "she said, flicking her hand at Jeep as if to encourage him to continue.

Jeep swallowed and looked at Michael.

The angel nodded his encouragement.

"Well," Jeep muttered, running his tongue along his dry and cracked lips, "I guess I'd best tell you why we're here, Officer Quinn. Michael says you like to keep things to the point. That's all right with me, as long as you promise to hear us out."

"She will," Jack said, speaking for the first time. The boy had sat silent in the rocking chair, exuding a sense of detachment that seemed so unlike his perpetually curious nature.

The news of his parents' passing was still pressing on his young, tender heart and his face looked hollow. Lost.

And Max, unfortunately, knew nothing of her nephew's sorrow.

"Jack," the woman said in a harsh undertone. "Go to your room. Now."

"But-" The boy rose from his chair, his protests numb and empty.

"Go," Max ordered.

Jack trudged out of the living room, his head hanging. As the boy passed him, Gabriel met his gaze briefly.

_Poor suffering child_, he thought.

When Jack had retreated to his room, Max turned her full attention back to her guests. "What were we talking about?" she asked, an undeniable note of weariness bleeding into her already tired tone.

This time, Charlie was the one to speak up.

"Your son looks a lot like you," she said, her hands comfortably cradling her baby's head.

Max raised an eyebrow. "That's strange, considering he's not my son."

"I…" Charlie's mouth flopped open.

"But he looks like my sister," Max replied, seemingly eager to smooth over the awkward moment. "She was his mother."

"Your nephew, then?" Charlie asked. The baby had begun to whine and she tugged at the dish towel, trying to adjust the swaddling so that it wrapped neatly around the infant's small, vulnerable body.

"Yeah." Max stared at them both. "And that's your son? How old is he, exactly? He looks like a newborn."

"Uh, he was born on Christmas," Charlie said with a smile and as her lips folded in a pleasant crease, all traces of her former antagonism towards Max evaporated. "You probably know the story already, though."

Max's eyes widened in a look of incredulity. "Christmas? I have to admit, I've kinda lost track of time, but that was only about a week ago, right? He really _is_ a newborn then. Wow…I had no idea…geez." She seemed at a loss.

And as Gabriel observed her, he was warmed by the sudden gentleness of her features, the smooth curve of her mouth as she looked at the child, the faint puckering of her brow registering maternal concern.

Max was indeed a consummate mother. How strange then, that she had never had a child of her own….

"Is that all you have for your baby?" she asked Charlie, pointing at the dirty dish towel that barely covered the baby's body. "Wait, lemme see what I have." She looked around, her eyes finally landing on the rocking chair behind her. Reaching over, Max gathered up the old crocheted afghan in her hands and passed it over to Charlie. "Here, take this then. It smells musty, but it's clean."

Gabriel studied both women closely and he saw the look of gratitude in Charlie's eyes, saw the longing and disappointment mirrored in Max's expression.

And unknowingly, his heart ached for her and the pain was new. Sharp. Piercing. For a moment, he was lost to it, lost to something that incomprehensible and unwelcome.

Uninvited.

But then the moment passed, becoming a shadow as it faded into his memory, as it escaped his awareness and left him cold once more.

He could not think of such things, he could not….

Gabriel shook his head, dispelling his doubt.

Charlie had settled her baby into the new blanket, cooing to the fussing infant. "Look at this, Robbie," she said. "We got you a nice new blanket. Handmade too, I bet." She glanced at Max. "Thank you."

But the woman would only shrug.

"I think now would be a good time to ask what you would of Officer Quinn," Michael told Jeep. He was standing near the young man, his bearing relaxed, his expression radiating warm hope.

But even as his brother spoke, Gabriel knew that he would be disappointed. Michael, after all, did not know Max quite as well as he did. He had not stayed with her the night before, had not cradled her in his arms, had not felt what Gabriel alone had felt.

And he never would.

Gabriel realized that he knew Max better than his brother ever could, that he understood her in a way that was unique and beyond Michael's comprehension. And surprisingly, he found that he was glad for the knowledge of such things, no matter how painful and daunting they were.

In some strange, unfathomable way, he felt that Max was his.

And because she was his, he knew what she would say now. Standing as a silent sentinel, his stomach knotted as he saw Jeep turn to Max.

"Charlie and me came here because we heard you can help us," he said. "We were wondering if we could live with you for a while and find some shelter here. You have this house and it seems like a safe place. We'd be willing to help you out with whatever needs doing. And we also thought…well, we figured there might be some things you could help us out with too." And almost subconsciously, Jeep touched the tattoos on his right wrist.

The tattoos written in angelic script, the words of a prophecy, unreadable to all except the appointed prophet.

It was the final coincidence. At last, Gabriel understood.

There it was. The truth. All of it. He felt comprehension dawn on him like a great, blinding light. But Gabriel could not stand the sight of it and he fought the urge to blind his eyes and deafen his ears.

The perfect sense, the reason of it all, was painful in its clarity.

He understood everything. _Everything. _

Michael had guided Charlie and Jeep to Max not only because he knew she could provide them with shelter, but so they might also meet one of the prophets.

One of the prophets, one of the prophets…

Jack.

Jack, the boy who was not afraid of angels. The child who spoke with a wisdom beyond his years. The wounded soul who accepted what was given to him and still did not scorn life. The human who possessed a strangely keen sense of perception.

And he remembered what Michael had told Jeep back at the diner.

_Find the prophets. Learn to read the instructions._

The prophets. Jack….

Gabriel realized that it was obviously no mischance having him remain with Max and Jack. Everything had been deliberate. Everything had been foreseen. Everything had been planned.

And Max had been used.

Some dark sickness filled Gabriel. Some putrid bile. His heart ached anew and his hands shook.

This understanding. This wretched, wretched understanding….

He wanted to confront Michael. He wanted to tell his brother once and for all how wrong he was to do this, how unfair it all was. But he could not.

In the end, it was Max who spoke for him.

"You want to stay here?" she asked Jeep. Her arms were folded about her middle again and Gabriel recognized her tense stance. Clearly, the notion did not thrill her. "Let me get this straight, you want to live here with me and my nephew?"

"Yeah, that's it," Jeep replied.

"We'd really appreciate it," Charlie added.

But the tough cop was back, the mother gone. Max looked at her two guests, although Gabriel noticed she avoided glancing at the baby.

"I'm sorry," she said, "but the answer is no."

* * *

**Author's Note: **The title of this chapter was taken from the song "Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette. It was featured in the movie _City of Angels_, the plot of which centers around an angel falling in love with a human woman.

In the next chapter, Gabriel confronts his brother over his hidden agenda. Michael finally reveals the true purpose of his mission and informs Gabriel of his new orders. Unfortunately, the next installment might be slightly delayed. I have three major research papers due next week along with the first chapter of my thesis, so instead of posting chapter twelve in ten days, it might take me two weeks. Sorry about that!

As always, if you have a free minute, please leave a review. Your feedback will really cheer me up when I'm buried up to my neck in essays and assignments this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you all have a very pleasant week!


	12. Chapter Twelve Free Will

**Author's Note: **Sorry this chapter is a little late, guys. As I mentioned in my previous update, the last two weeks were unbelievably crazy. However, the good news is my semester is almost over and I should have an entire summer to dedicate to this fic. ^_^

And I have to say, I was just thrilled by all the lovely reviews I received for the last chapter. I cannot possibly express how grateful I am for the continued support of my readers. So thank you **helendemaria, Yes-Man, AutumnKrystal, ArmoredSoul, little biscuit, moondawntreader, dark's silver shadow, bobson, ValentineRobot, QuietTimeChocolates, The Wicked That Mourns Just **and **happysgirl29**. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys are the best! I hope you enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twelve Free Will**

As Gabriel watched the rusty old pick-up truck crawl out of the driveway and down towards the main road, something of relief lessened the burden in his heart. Jeep and Charlie and their little child were gone. Gone.

Their reappearance had been unexpected, like a sudden spray of cinders rising from a dying fire. In a moment they had come and in a moment they had left, lonely and lost and anchorless. Perpetual wanderers doomed to walk the earth as Cain had ages before.

And Gabriel found he could not pity them. He was like Max in that way, in that one, small way.

Standing by the bay windows in the living room, he followed the progress of the truck until it turned onto the main road and roared away, its worn tires screeching on the cracked blacktop. A sigh slipped through Gabriel's lips. How strangely happy he was, knowing that he would never be forced to see those humans again. Their presence seemed to him nothing short of an ill omen, an unfortunate herald to dark times and dark deeds and dark thoughts.

And Max certainly knew this, for why else would she refuse them shelter?

The living room of the tiny house was empty now. Jack was still locked in his bedroom and Max had moved into the kitchen, where Michael also lingered. Gabriel noticed that his brother had drifted close to the door to the garage, as though he were at war with himself, fighting the urge to go after Jeep and Charlie before they disappeared like lost sheep into a wilderness where wolves certainly prowled.

Gabriel wondered why he did not follow them. It seemed odd that Michael would not interfere on behalf of Jeep and Charlie, the two humans he had struggled to save, the two insignificant mortals he had shed his blessed wings for when he fell from grace. An uneasy sense of curiosity grew in Gabriel's already beleaguered mind. He paced away from the windows, pausing on the border between the living room and the kitchen where the ratty carpet gave way to the dingy linoleum floor.

Max had busied herself by the sink, rinsing out the two coffee mugs under a stream of water coming from the faucet. But her hands were unsteady and as she moved to transfer the mugs to the drain, her fingers slipped on the wet ceramic and they clattered to the floor.

"Dammit," she muttered, bending to pick up a mug that had its handle cracked off. "Dammit. Dammit. Dammit."

Gabriel almost stepped forward to help her, but he restrained himself when he saw Michael take the lead. His brother crossed the kitchen and picked up the other mug, resting it carefully in the drain.

Max refused to look at him. "You're mad at me," she said, pushing her messy bangs out of her eyes with fluttery fingers. "I can tell. You're pissed off because I wouldn't help your friends."

Michael moved to touch her shoulder and for some reason, the simple gesture made Gabriel's gut clench.

But Max herself flinched and recoiled, drawing back against the kitchen sink. "That wasn't easy for me, you know," she said.

"I know," Michael replied. He eased himself away from Max and returned to his place by the garage door. "And I am not angry with you."

"That's a lie," Max shot back.

It was then that Gabriel interrupted. "Angels do not lie," he told her. "Michael would not mislead you." And even as the words left his mouth, he tasted their bitterness, their taint.

No, Michael would not lie, but that did not mean he was incapable of deception.

And he had deceived Max.

"You instructed Jeep and Charlie to come here," he said, approaching his brother. There was an accusation in his voice when he addressed him, his words weighed down with suspicion.

Michael looked taciturn, his lips pinched together. "Gabriel," he warned.

"Wait, what's going on?" Max asked. When Michael wouldn't answer her, she turned to Gabriel instead. "Please tell me," she begged. "If not for my sake, then for Jack's. You can't keep us in the dark here. It's not fair. It's not right. I've done my best to help you Gabriel, now please, help me."

This was nearly unbearable. Gabriel couldn't stop himself.

"Michael knows that Jeep and Charlie are in danger without shelter," he said, voicing his assumptions at last. "He also knows that you have a house and room to spare. I believe he thought that you would provide refuge for them if he sent them here. Obviously, he does not understand how perilous your own situation is, otherwise he would not ask this great thing of you," he finished, a low growl vibrating in his tone.

_You know what you have done, brother_, Gabriel thought as he looked at Michael. He was pleased when he saw his fellow archangel begin to look slightly ashamed.

"I do not deny my motives," Michael replied, turning his head to the side so that he was looking away from Max and Gabriel and down the hallway instead. "What Gabriel says is true. I thought you might be inclined to help Jeep and Charlie, although I am not angry with you for turning them away."

"Disappointed, then?" Max asked. She stepped forward, placing her fingertips on the table. "You thought I was good person. Maybe you were wrong."

"That is not true," Gabriel replied at once.

Max glanced at him. "You of all people should know better," she said. "You know what I've done." Her voice was laced with sorrowful resignation. Acceptance.

And Gabriel found that he pitied her anew, for it was devastating to witness her strength falter and cede to numb acquiescence. She stood by the table, limp and listless, her very flesh appearing faded, her eyes circled with bruised rings.

"You have regrets," Michael said, returning his gaze to the woman. "But you should not bow to them."

"Yeah, well," Max muttered, folding her fingers into fists and pressing her knuckles against the table, "I did what I had to do…what I _had_ to do, understand? Jeep and Charlie can't stay here. We have food now, but we'll run out again. And there's no telling when you two will get tired of hanging around here. After a while, you'll leave me and Jack and we'll be on our own. I'm responsible for that kid. I'm the only family he has left. I can't go playing innkeeper to a couple of strangers."

Gabriel wondered if Max realized the symbolism in her own words. After all, it had been a lowly innkeeper in a backwoods town called Bethlehem that had found room for another needful child in a rundown stable.

He glanced at Michael, thinking that he, perhaps, had noticed the subtle metaphor. But his brother seemed as oblivious as Max, his thoughts venturing far behind the confines of the little kitchen to the greater world, to the realm that was above human reckoning and unreachable to any mortal mind.

"You need not explain yourself to me," he told Max. "You love Jack and you must care for him. Please believe me when I say that I will never seek to interfere with your guardianship of the boy. I would never wish to lead you, or him, for that matter, into peril. As it is, the matter of Jeep and Charlie has been settled…for now. We will discuss it no more. I apologize for causing you any unnecessary grief."

Max shook her head. "I'm not saying that you did-"

But Michael would not permit her to finish. "I must depart," he said abruptly. "Gabriel, you shall accompany me. Goodbye, Max. Take great care. I bless both you and the child."

And with so little ceremony, without a further word or farewell, he turned to go, pushing open the door as he headed into the garage.

Gabriel did not think, but moved to follow his brother. He both recognized and welcomed the sudden return of Michael's decisive nature. There could be no room for argument now. Gabriel's inner being, his thoughts and desires were meant to give way to an order from his General. When a command was given he obeyed. Blindly. And there was something soothing in the blindness itself. Comforting. A reliable certainty that gave him purpose.

As it was, Gabriel rarely questioned the reason behind such an order, although he could not deny the sudden leap his heart took when he realized that he was, perhaps, being called home. And since being exiled to earth, he had only wished to return to the celestial realm, had only desired and hoped and prayed for a reprieve from his exile. Now he would be restored to his home, to his former glory as his took up his position by the Throne once more. Now he could know only joy…only joy…

But as he moved into the garage, Gabriel could not reconcile his harried emotions with joy. There was no flicker of happiness in his mind. No rush of relief. Only some sickening pain. Some sharp, new agony.

_Agony._

He heard Max behind him, her steps quick, her shoes slapping against the concrete floor of the garage.

"Wait!" she called. "Oh Gabriel, please wait!"

He almost stopped. He almost heeded her call and turned back, but it would be impossible for him to leave then, impossible to break away once he saw the sorrow in her eyes…

…the sorrow that would surely mirror his own.

Instead, he focused only on the motions of his body, the great, long strides his legs took, the sudden flow of adrenalin that made the tips of his wings tingle.

He was leaving…he was finally free….

"Please!" Max cried, her voice bleeding into the cold air as Gabriel stepped outside the garage and onto the driveway.

He spread his wings, felt the first gust of wind lift him off the ground…

"Gabriel!"

He did not respond. And as he launched himself into the sky, as he ascended higher and higher, as he left the earth behind, Gabriel looked back at Max one last time.

She was standing in the driveway, a forlorn figure in a forsaken world, her shoulders heaving as the last of control fled and she began to cry.

To weep for _him_.

And had he been weaker, had he been a creature of earthly flesh and blood and frailty, he might have cried for her.

* * *

It took Gabriel longer than usual to propel himself up to the height of the clouds. His wings were stiff, the joints protesting with sharp nips and aches as he struggled to overcome the vying currents of wind and gain some sense of equilibrium and stability. It had been some time since he had last flown, having spent a good week earthbound due to his injuries. As it was, the wound to his shoulder still pained him whenever he beat his wings, the cauterized flesh stretching tightly over knotted muscle and torn sinew. Gabriel found he had to grit his teeth every time he raised his left wing and many a long minute had passed before his eyes stopped watering.

Finally, after a torturous struggle, he parted the vaporous barrier of clouds and emerged in the clear blue of the unbroken, unending sky where Michael awaited him.

"I did not think you would come," his brother said, flying in tight circles, the tips of his razor wings flashing when the sun glanced off each ebony feather.

"You asked it of me," Gabriel replied.

Michael said nothing, but he paused for a fraction of a second, losing height rapidly as soon as his wings stopped beating. Without offering an explanation, he dropped back beneath clouds.

If Gabriel had been a human, he might have expressed his frustration in one of their vulgar, profane epithets. He was confused and, at the same time, highly perturbed. He had assumed, of course, that Michael would lead him home, that they would break the imperceptible wall between the heavenly and the earthly as they had so many times before and enter into the realm of the Most High. And yet here was his brother, falling so readily back to earth.

This time, Gabriel did not bother to withhold a groan as he dove through the clouds. Michael was on the other side, a look of unusual impatience distorting his angular features.

"Are we not returning home?" Gabriel asked, his breath coming in sharp spurts as he fought to maintain his height with every painful beat of his wings.

"No, we will not be going far." Michael wheeled to the right, gliding just below the clouds.

For a moment, Gabriel thought his brother was headed back towards the main road where he would inevitably meet with Jeep and Charlie, but then he saw him change his direction until he soared closer to the distant mountains. Once again, confusion struck Gabriel, but he refrained from offering up a useless argument. For a good half hour, he followed his brother over the desert flatlands, only slowing his pace when they came to the first of the foothills. These they also bypassed, rising against the sheer face of the mountainside until the craggy walls of rock gave way, opening into caves and crevices and small, perilous cliffs.

By now, Gabriel's body had adjusted to the constant motion of his wings and he felt his strength begin to restore itself. It disappointed him, then, when he saw Michael drop his wings and glide through another small crevice in the mountainside. When Gabriel drew level with him, he realized that the opening in the rock was larger than he had imagined, revealing a narrow dell, verdant with green grass and a small, purling stream.

Michael landed in the vale, his knees bracing and bending slightly as his legs took the full force of the impact. Gabriel followed suit, albeit reluctantly, and alighted a few feet away from his brother. His wings, which had been chilled by the streams of cold air coming down from the mountains, quivered with renewed energy. He thought he could fly a little longer if he needed to, thought he could soar heedlessly into the skies, rise and dive, spiral through desert canyons and dip low enough to brush the white foam of churning rapids with his fingertips. But his desire for frivolity and pleasure was inconsequential, something he never considered indulging. Instead, Gabriel quietly consigned himself to the earth once more, his boots filling with lead as he strode over the thick carpet of grass.

Michael himself had dropped onto the ground, sitting in a cross-legged position on the bank of the thin mountain stream Gabriel had noticed from above. Fretfully, he picked at a blade of grass and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger. The spray from the stream set diamonds into his otherwise unadorned armor, sprinkling the bared skin of his arms with tiny droplets.

"I am not angry with Max," he said, never raising his eyes from the streambed, his face set in an expression of purpose, something molded and melted out of resistant steel. "Her denial was…to be expected. I knew she would refuse Charlie and Jeep."

And as Gabriel listened to his brother, he felt some unknown emotion take hold of him, something that made his insides freeze, and then, inexplicably, boil with unrepressed heat. He was angered, but not enraged. He was pained, but not by any physical wound. He was fearful, but not from any known threat.

It took him some time to define the roiling, dark sensation that crept beneath his flesh and burrowed in his marrow. And then Gabriel realized what it was.

Jealousy. He was jealous.

"You have some knowledge of Max?" he said sharply, giving vent to his envy. He had no logical reason to believe that his brother knew any less or any more of the woman than he did. And if Michael knew something else, if he had guessed at her secrets or seen something of Max that Gabriel had not, then what would it matter?

Nothing. No, nothing mattered. But Gabriel knew he would be deceiving himself if he did not recognize his increasingly possessive tendencies.

Max was not_ his_, after all. Not his.

Gabriel swallowed, driving back the rising lump in his throat. "I only meant," he said, "that I am surprised to learn that you have watched Max so keenly. I did not believe you had any vested interest in the woman. Is she of some purpose?"

And oh, it was almost impossible for him to disguise the fierce curiosity that had risen up within him. He wanted Michael to open with him now, needed him to reveal the nuances to all the little coincidences that were adding up to a dreadful whole. Gabriel had guessed much and assumed more. It was obvious that his brother was keeping something from him.

Michael's brows knitted together as he listened to Gabriel, his fingers running over the blade of grass with perfect delicacy. "Purpose?" he said, his nostrils dilating as he inhaled deeply. "I dislike the term. It is too martial. Too mercenary, perhaps. But yes, there is a purpose to my designs. I would be lying if I said Max was not involved. And yet, I believe you already suspected as much, brother." Briefly, Michael raised his eyes to him, the swift currents of the stream reflected in them to reveal some private hesitation and misgiving.

Gabriel was surprised when he saw his brother's uncertainty. It was unlike Michael to be conflicted. Determined, yes. Clear-minded, yes. But not unsure. No, never unsure.

He took a deep breath, following Michael's example and inhaling the untainted air of the hidden mountain vale. The scents of grass and snow and stone and water soon drove the stale smell of the garage and the tiny house from his lungs, but in the end, he found he only felt cold. Hollow. A brittle, bruised shell.

Gabriel turned away from Michael, folding his wings around his body to protect himself from the cold gusts that swept down from the peaks. There was an ache in the wind, something hungry and voracious and even in the protection of the vale, he felt watched.

Judged.

"The prophets," Gabriel said slowly, looking over the crook of his right wing at his brother.

Michael nodded. "Yes, you understand now."

It was not the answer he had wanted to hear and for the first time, Gabriel found that he hated being right.

"You knowingly sent Jeep and Charlie to the house," he said, unable to keep the accusation out of his tone. "You knew they would find what they were looking for there."

"Protection," Michael put in.

"And one of the prophets," Gabriel replied gruffly. He shut his eyes for a instant, thinking of Jack. "But Max refused to be a _pawn_ in the game. You cannot force her to comply. She does, after all, have free will."

"Yes." A pained, thin smile formed on Michael's lips. "Free will. And as it stands, brother, so do you."

"I do not understand." Gabriel let his wings drop and he turned to face his brother fully. Confusion, sharp and desperate, gnawed at him. Michael's words were terrible and they troubled him, disturbed him.

"Do you remember when we last stood together on the very edge of Heaven?" Michael asked him. "The sky was of fire and all of the earth was at our feet. And you reproached me, brother, for my thoughts of disobedience, for the questions that filled my heart and left me adrift. I had hoped you would be my anchor, that you would but extend your hand and I would find surety once more. But you were cold. You chided me, reviled my doubt. We are brothers and yet such a great chasm opened between us that night. It pains me still."

And Gabriel was likewise pained. He wanted to be angry with Michael for reminding him of the incident. Perhaps he should have been more open with his brother and consoled him in his time of need. Perhaps he should have been patient and understanding. Perhaps, if he had offered counsel and not a harsh reprimand, Michael would have never fallen.

But what did it matter now, at this late hour? The deed was done. Michael had turned his back on the Father and yet it was Gabriel who had failed.

Shame stained his cheeks a blotchy red and the angel raised his wing once more, hoping to hide the telltale mark of his regret from his brother.

"I remember that night," he said, the great thunder of his voice trumpeting deep within his chest. "I remember how troubled I was when you questioned Him…threatened to defy Him. But what is the worth of all that now? I thought you would have me put such strife from my mind."

"I would," Michael replied and despite his even temperament, his gracious and everlasting patience, signs of his distress were beginning to show through. The blade of grass was crushed between his fingers, leaving a green smudge on the pad of his thumb. "Do you think that I have brought up the matter only to cause you renewed sorrow? My intentions are much more practical. I only wish to remind you of what we spoke of. Do you recall what I said to you that night? You said that the Father's judgment of mankind was just. Do you remember my reply?"

Gabriel thought hard for a minute, unwilling as he was to inspect the painful memory fully. The details of it, however, were etched firmly into his mind. Even now he could see the length of the shadows, the fluttering of Michael's cloak, the tawny tint of the setting sun.

_They are just lost. It is our place to guide them._

"I remember," he said, feeling all the muscles in his jaw tighten as he ground out the words. "You spoke of guidance."

"Indeed." Michael's eyes widened. He obviously felt that they were close to reaching some sort of understanding, although Gabriel wasn't sure why his brother was leading him along. In the past, they had always been frank with each other. Perhaps, he wondered, Michael simply felt that he couldn't trust him any more.

"It has always been our place to guide the children of men," Michael continued, his words falling into an easy rhythm that matched the gurgling of the stream. "To bring the will of the Father to them, to whisper in their ears the very words of the Almighty. Nothing has changed. We are called upon once more to act as we always have. To guide. Max has said she will have nothing to do with Charlie and Jeep. Her hand cannot be forced, her mind may not be changed…but she must be guided. Whether her choice will remain the same or not, I do not know. But she will look to us, brother. She will look to _you_."

The way he spoke the last word, the way it fell from his lips with a dim echo, brought Gabriel to the brink. He felt as though he were standing upon a precipice, above a great sea of mist that clouded around the base of some high, lofty peak. He could not see the ground, he could not see the way…and if he fell….

Fear swamped him, leaving his skin chilled and clammy. The back of his neck ached, the column strained from supporting the heavy weight of his head. For a moment, Gabriel wanted only to lie down upon the fragrant grass and forget. Forget.

"Brother!" Michael climbed to his feet, his wings unfurling behind him. The sharp edge to his voice pulled Gabriel back, dragged him away from the edge of unreliable fantasy and into the cold comfort of reality.

"Are these my orders then?" he asked numbly. "Is this what has been asked of me?"

Michael raised a brow. "You are too astute for your own good, brother," he said. "Or perhaps too narrow-minded."

"Oh Michael." Gabriel shook his head. "This rigmarole is unnecessary. You talk in circles. I only ask that you be honest with me, as you once were. I feel we are at the heart of the matter now. Tell me, have I been asked to stay behind with Max to guide her? Is this what the Father has ordered?"

His brother did not hesitate. "No."

Gabriel was shocked by Michael's response, but even more shocked by the surge of fierce disappointment he experienced.

So this was the end. He had no purpose here, no purpose with Max….

Michael raised his hand, effectively cutting off Gabriel's perilous thoughts. "I shall explain," he said. "You understand that Max must be guided. Her mind, her very soul, is at war with itself. The choice she made today will not be her last and she cannot decide alone."

"Perhaps she shouldn't decide at all," Gabriel interrupted him, his voice bitter. "Perhaps she should be left alone. The woman wants nothing to do with this."

"That may be so," Michael replied evenly. "I myself cannot tell."

"Because you know nothing of her."

"Gabriel." His brother took a step forward, closing the space between them. "I beg you, listen to me."

"Apologies," Gabriel muttered. His chilled flesh had suddenly warmed, leaving him flushed and filling his limbs with unused energy. "I ask you a question and then scoff at the answer. Please, speak. I will not challenge you again."

Michael nodded, clapping a hand on the dark-haired angel's shoulder. "Do not apologize. I understand your upset. It is not unwarranted. I will speak plainly and not draw the matter out. Max must be guided, that you know. However, you yourself have a choice. If you do not wish any involvement in this issue, you may return home at once. I will gladly remain in your place and do my best to guide her. On the other hand, if you are not so opposed to Max and Jack as you once were, then you might also remain behind and watch over them directly. The decision is yours entirely. And I say now, I will offer you no counsel in this matter, not because I am disinclined to, but only because you must settle the question for yourself. I will force nothing on you and neither will our Father. You have no orders. Do what you will."

Gabriel waited until he had finished speaking, restraining himself with difficulty as he listened to his brother. At last, when Michael fell silent, he posed his first burning question.

"Is this my punishment?" he asked.

Michael dropped his hand from his shoulder. "To decide for yourself? I think not."

"But the notion is false," Gabriel added. "We are not human, Michael. The Father did not give us the power of choice. I may not decide to remain or to depart. It is not my place, nor has it ever been."

A crooked, sardonic smile lifted the corner of his brother's mouth. "You have the mind of a tiresome scholar," he said. "Always ruminating. Can you not, for once, see the matter as it truly stands? This has nothing to do with duty or what has been asked of us. You may return home or you may stay behind. Put everything else from your mind and do what you will."

Gabriel did not know if he should be insulted by Michael's levity. He drew himself up to his full height and half-turned, showing his brother his back. "You say that quite often," he rumbled. "I realize it may have some effect upon the humans, but I cannot approach the matter so simply."

"Then you will stand here and debate and ponder for ages to come. What would you have me say to you, Gabriel? There is no grand scheme in all this. Do you doubt my honesty?"

Gabriel decided it would be best not to answer the question. Michael would certainly not like his answer. Instead, he deflected with a query of his own.

"What if I wish to remain behind, but have no desire to convince Max to take on Charlie and Jeep?" he asked.

Michael exhaled sharply. "I see you still bear some personal enmity towards them. I would advise you to discard your dislike. It is not appropriate."

"This has nothing to do with Jeep and Charlie," Gabriel countered at once, ashamed that his brother would think so poorly of him, would believe that he was more concerned with some personal grudge than the will of the Father. "I only spoke concerning Max."

"Max?" Michael's brows jumped together. "You are concerned with Max?"

Gabriel felt his knuckles tighten. "Is she not also a party in this matter?" he asked, making a vain attempt at neutrality.

But Michael's face was alight now, his eyes widening with what Gabriel felt must be understanding.

Understanding, understanding of what?

"Perhaps I have been remiss," his brother muttered, incredulity seeping into his tone. "Perhaps this is a symptom of something deeper. Brother, will you be honest with me? Will you tell me the truth?"

There was something of inevitability in the air. Something of indefinite change and turbulence. Gabriel felt it wash over him and he rejected it, pushed it away until he was standing on the precipice again, ready to plunge into the depths of the unknown….

No. He must stop this now.

"Do not say these things, Michael," he replied, although he was not entirely sure what he was warning his brother against, what secret he was hiding. "I cannot speak of this. My mind is in darkness."

And indeed, his thoughts seemed to betray him. The uncertainty of it all was exquisite, driving a fresh sense of fear into Gabriel's heart. He feared himself and his unworthy hope and his misplaced desire.

And Max, he realized that he feared Max….

Silence dropped over the vale, interrupted only by the incessant bubbling of the stream. Gabriel waited for his brother to question him, to reveal the truth of it all and rightly condemn him.

But to his surprise, and utter relief, Michael dropped the matter. "Have you made your decision?" he said, all former traces of his curiosity dissipating like an early morning mist burned off by the sensible rays of the sun. "Will you stay behind?"

Gabriel said nothing for a long time. He tried to clear his mind, but found he could think only of Max and how she had looked standing there, alone in the desert, waiting from him to come back….

"Perhaps you should remain," he said at length. "After all, Max does seem to have some personal devotion to you. How often, I wonder, was it that you heard her prayers?"

But Michael would not respond, would not satisfy his morbid musings. "I see you have not yet settled the matter," he said, moving away from Gabriel until he was at the edge of the vale. "In that case, I have nothing more to say to you."

"Then leave," Gabriel grunted, unable to look at him.

"Is that what you truly wish?"

Gabriel did not hesitate. "Yes."

There was the sound of rushing wind as Michael spread his wings, dropping back into the sky. "It is you she needs, brother," he called down from on high. "Not me."

* * *

Gabriel did not stay long in the mountain vale after Michael's departure. Following his brother's example, he moved to the edge of the peak and dropped into the sky, allowing himself to plummet, buffeted only by the shrieking wind. Gabriel waited until the last moment to catch himself, waited until his belly almost grazed the rocky soil of the uppermost foothills before he spread his wings and glided off into the violet hues of an early twilight. The sensation of falling, of coming so perilously close to destruction made his heart jump into his throat, where it remained for a beat or two, a potent reminder of the physical limitations of his otherwise angelic body.

Gabriel flew away from the mountains, climbing steadily until he soared just below the darkening clouds. He knew he could rise higher, rise and rise and rise until he left the earthly atmosphere and delivered his being, body and soul, into the realms of Heaven.

And he was tempted, sorely tempted to leave behind the domain of mankind, to shuffle of this mortal coil, as Shakespeare would say.

But Max knew something of Shakespeare, didn't she? As he swooped over the desert floor, flying in aimless circles, Gabriel remembered that he had wanted to ask her just when she had occasion to read Hamlet. She certainly did not seem in the habit of appreciating the fine culture of her species, although he was increasingly aware of his own misconceptions of her.

There was more to Max, he thought, than met the eye.

And what of Jack, that haunted, child prophet? The boy who already carried a heavy burden in his heart. The human Gabriel desperately wanted to help.

_It is our place to guide them._

Yes, yes it was, although Gabriel himself had always considered any of his previous interactions with humans to be a tedious, if not stale duty. And here he was now, not obligated to extend to his hand to Max and Jack, not ordered to lead them through the shadow of the valley of death.

But he wanted to. He wanted to in a way that was new to him. Foreign. The strange nature of his desire made him nervous, yes, made him frightened. The yearning was persistent, though. Forceful. Strong.

Gabriel left off flying in circles and directed his course to the south…towards Max.

He should not do this thing. He should return to Heaven and to his rightful station by the Throne. His place was not here, not amongst the plain, plebian trappings of mankind, but in the sphere of celestial brilliance, where all the choirs of angels rejoiced, sounding everlasting hosannas and unending hymns of praise.

Listing to the right, Gabriel swooped closer to the earth, his wings fully extended so as to cast faint, triangular shadows on the hard packed soil below. The sun was inching towards the western horizon and to the east, the night gathered in thick, cerulean folds, dotted here and there with the tentative glimmer of the first stars. Up ahead, just beyond the reach of the spreading shadows, he saw a pinprick of light, a lone, wandering beam piercing through the gloom of a broken world. The wind keened in Gabriel's ears, reminding him that the earth had a music of its own, the mortal choirs of air and water, of life and death.

Without realizing his intent, he shifted the weight of his lower torso forward, thrusting his legs directly beneath him as his wings fanned the fickle currents of the wind. And he landed, softly, quietly, by one of the empty horse paddocks. The tiny house sat before him, a solid structure in the wilds of the Mojave, a thing of regularity and straight walls and slanting roof tiles.

It was a humble dwelling, but a worthy home nonetheless. Gabriel moved up the pathway to the garage door, which he was surprised to find left open, inviting both the welcomed and the unwelcome. As soon as he stepped inside, the angel pulled the door closed behind him and locked it securely as he had seen Max do so many times. When he was satisfied that the house was safeguarded, or as fortified as it could possibly be, he entered the kitchen.

Jack he spotted in the living room, sitting on the old sofa with the springs that poked through the upholstery. There was a plate on the boy's lap with a half-eaten sandwich upon it. An untouched glass of milk sat on the coffee table nearby.

Max was in the kitchen, her hands braced on the sink as she looked out the window, as she stared at her reflection in the foggy panes of glass.

Gabriel wasn't certain, but in studying the reflection, he thought he saw a few stray tears glistening on her cheeks.

_They are just lost. _

"What do you look at?" he asked the woman, his boots ringing out on the sticky linoleum floor.

Max wheeled away from the window, one hand flying to her temple. "Shit," she whispered. "You scared me."

Gabriel moved closer to her, all too aware of the distance between them, the subtle space that kept them apart.

"That was not my intent," he said. "I am sorry."

Max massaged her temple and Gabriel saw that there were indeed tears in her eyes.

"I didn't know where you went," she said faintly. She was brushing her hair back from her brow, the movement just barely disguising the shaking that had infected her fingers. "When you left with Michael, I thought you were gone for good."

Gabriel stepped towards her. "No." He had heard the question in her voice, had heard the shade of fear and uncertainty. It was a mark of utter frailty and it disturbed him, causing his skin to prickle and his heart to thunder in his ears.

Perhaps Michael had been right. He always was, after all. Perhaps Max did need Gabriel more than she could ever need his brother.

And perhaps, yes, perhaps, he needed her.

No. _No._

Max dropped her hand from her temple and twisted her fingers together. Vaguely, Gabriel became aware of Jack leaving his post in the living room and venturing into the kitchen.

They were gathering about him, he realized, surrounding him. Closing in.

No way out. No way out.

But did he want a way out?

Max approached him, wearing an expression that was so harried and overwhelmed that her face looked like a mask frozen in a permanent, hollow stare.

"So," she said, raising her eyes to meet his.

Gabriel was confused. "So?"

Max bit her lip. "Are you…I mean, when are you going to leave us?"

He realized it then, the longing, the yearning of her weak, human heart. She did not want him to go.

But his place was not here and it never could be.

"Are you going?" Max asked him, not bothering to disguise her dark doubt, the perilous shades of her own misplaced hope.

Gabriel closed his eyes. He could not remain, he could not….

"No," he said and his voice trembled when he spoke. "I am staying with you."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so very much for taking the time to read! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I truly appreciate every bit of feedback I receive for this story.

In the next chapter, Gabriel finds himself struggling to define his relationship with Max. When she approaches him for some much needed advice, his response stuns them both.

With any luck, I should have chapter thirteen posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!


	13. Chapter Thirteen Waiting

**Author's Note: **Sorry this chapter is a few days late. My internet provider experienced a serious glitch this week and I was without service for a few days. Fortunately, we're back in business now.

As always, I have to thank everyone who took the time to review the last chapter, **Fyrefly, ArmoredSoul, Lexicon, WithLoveFromTorchwood, little biscuit, moondawntreader, Yes-Man **and **dark's silver shadow**. I cannot possibly express how much your kind words mean to me. From the bottom of my heart, thank you all! Also, I'd like to thank everyone who added this story to their favorites/author alerts. Your support is very much appreciated. I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Thirteen Waiting **

Like any uncharted territory  
I must seem greatly intriguing  
You speak of my love like  
You have experienced love like mine before  
-"_Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette_

Gabriel had never fully understood the perils of waiting. As an archangel, a being accustomed to the limitless sphere of Heaven, where the present reigned and the past and future were immeasurable, he had never experienced the anxiety of expectancy, the fear of what was to come. But things were different now. Having resigned himself to the domain of man, he was confronted by the complexities of time, the slow passage of hours, the breathless moments of anticipation, the surreal ebb and flow apprehension.

For three days Gabriel endured the waiting. His thoughts were scattered. The logic he relied upon fell away and he found himself drowning, being pulled down beneath the black. And he could not see what was beyond the dark. What was beyond the shadowy, sinister veil.

For three days he waited, unsure of what was to come, but knowing all the while that something _was_ coming. The air still had the feel of the inevitable, the uncertainty of change. It was bearing down upon him, breathing on his neck, panting and gasping, promising a reckoning that he did not yet understand, that he would never comprehend.

And Gabriel waited. He did as his brother had instructed. He waited and he watched. And with each passing minute, with each torturous second, he tried to shield Max and Jack from his fear, from his very real and vibrant terror.

They must know nothing of his insecurity. They must know _nothing_.

Unfortunately, it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to remain aloof from his human hosts. He had willingly insinuated himself into their affairs, into their very lives, and without his knowing, without any overt realization, they had accepted him.

And surprisingly enough, it was Max who now openly welcomed him into her home. Her gratefulness for him, for his presence, became apparent as she extended herself, exerting all her limited power to make his stay more comfortable. She tried to convince him to take up residence in their spare bedroom and even brought him pillows and blankets down from the attic. She continually offered him food, and when he gently refused to partake in their meals, she invited him to join them at the table while they ate.

And on the morning after his meeting with Michael, Gabriel had witnessed the woman wriggle beneath the house's crawl space like a burrowing rodent as she went to fetch his arms and armor.

It was an amusing spectacle to the say the least, although he had forced himself to remain passive as he watched her lug out his heavy breastplate, his pauldrons and vambraces and greaves. She brought him his mace last, dragging it from underneath the house with a loud groan as she struggled to lift the heavy weapon.

"I hope I don't regret this," she said as she let the great mass of spiked metal fall at his feet.

Gabriel said nothing, recognizing, at once, that Max always had to have the last word. In the past, he might have found her stubbornness irritating, but now he could only feel a certain mount of appreciation for it. Determination was something he admired, and seeing the little woman display such remarkable willpower gave him reason to respect her.

Yes, he could respect Max. It was harmless enough to offer her his grudging approval, although at times, he felt, no he _feared_ that his approval was unsteady. Something that could be changed. Something that could grow until it became twisted and warped. Something that could transform itself until it became more like….

More like what? Gabriel didn't dare answer the question. It was a trap. A snare. A dangerous, albeit alluring mind game. But even though he tried to ignore his own sense of ambiguity, he did allow himself to worry. Worry incessantly. Obsessively. And in quiet moments, during the few minutes of solitude he had for himself, he began to wonder if he should have returned to the old house in the wilds of the Mojave.

His brother, at it was, had offered him the freedom of choice and although Gabriel wasn't familiar with the complexities of free will, he had accepted the burden. His heart, his strange notion of empathy, had begged him to stay with Max and Jack, although his sense of self-preservation argued for the opposite. And when he was alone, he questioned and he doubted and he considered, very often, that perhaps he should have returned to his home, where he would be freed from the pain of waiting and the responsibility of watching over two, weak little humans.

At times, Gabriel's body would respond to his regret, the joints in his wings stretching, promising to bear him away from the dust of the earth, his legs aching with unused energy. He could run, he could fly, he could leave Max and Jack behind.

The allure of release was tempting, too tempting….

To keep his body from betraying his indecision, Gabriel remained in the house as much as he could. Since Michael had left the pantry well stocked, Max no longer went on scavenging trips. Instead, she spent her days indoors and as Gabriel watched her move about, watched walk through the halls and the rooms with no purpose or path, he wondered if she too experienced the agony of waiting, if she was also just as lost as he was.

"I feel useless," she said to Gabriel on the evening of the third day. "What am I supposed to do now?"

They were standing together in the hall outside of Jack's room. Max had just put her nephew to bed and as she closed his door behind her, fresh worry puckered her brow. She had not failed to recognize how quiet the boy had grown, how withdrawn and solemn.

And Gabriel found that as much as he wished to relieve her concern, he could not bear to tell her that Jack knew of his parents' passing. For some reason, he did not think she would be pleased with his intervention in the matter, and he wanted, with all his heart, for Max to trust him.

After all, hadn't Michael admitted that the woman needed Gabriel more than she could ever need him?

Gabriel stood straight, the tops of his wings grazing the ceiling overhead. Max was right in front of him, leaning against Jack's door, her eyes on her feet.

And there was so little space between them. He could touch her if he wanted to. Could reach out and lace his fingers through hers….

"You should not feel useless," he said. "Find some comfort in these quiet moments. I told you that I would remain with you. Does that make you happy?" His voice was neutral, eternally impassive, but inside, in the innermost sphere of his soul, he wanted Max to tell him that she was happy…

…that she was so very happy to have him with her.

But she didn't. Instead, she rubbed her hand over her arm, unconsciously ironing out the unwashed wrinkles in her shirtsleeve. "Do you think Michael will come back?" she asked him.

Gabriel's heart twisted and the familiar taste of jealousy pooled in his mouth. "I do not know," he said shortly.

He was hoping her subsequent reaction would be telling. That he'd catch a glimpse of her private yearning and in seeing it, find some understanding himself. But Max was a mystery. She shrugged her shoulders, her expression far-off and wandering.

"So what happens now?"

Gabriel sharply through his nostrils. He didn't know what to tell her. Their world was a world of impermanence, a world of uncertainty and dark, dangerous questions. And how could he be expected to guide Max while he himself knew nothing, while he existed on the edge of the unknown?

Gabriel folded his arms together and watched as the woman slumped against her nephew's bedroom door. "I do not know," he repeated, hating the vagueness of the words, hating his own impotency, his powerlessness.

There was no direction in this wandering. There was nothing.

His answer, however, seemed to be good enough for Max. She waved her hand at him, parting the air between them with the flailing of her wrist.

"I'm going to go crazy," she said, "staying in the house like this. I feel like I'm not doing anything."

"Maybe there is nothing to do," Gabriel counseled, disgusted by the hopelessness and resignation in his voice.

Max shrugged her shoulders once more. "There has to be something. There is always something. Wanna go for a walk with me? I know I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight. And what's the point of sleeping when you don't have anything to wake up for?"

This frightened Gabriel and he was troubled by this sudden uprising of despondency in Max, she who had been so resilient. "You have Jack," he told her with some urgency. "You live for him."

But Max only shook her head. "I didn't mean it like that. I wasn't being literal. It's just…I hate this waiting. You know what I mean, don't you? You have to understand."

There was a real hint of desperation about her now, Gabriel realized, although he could only feel relief. Wild, reckless, meaningless relief. Yes, he did understand. He understood it all. And she, Max, must understand him….

"We will go for a walk, then," he said. "And we will find something to do. Anything to do." And as he spoke, he offered her a smile, a real, genuine smile that sprang up from some hidden wellspring of unknown joy, expressing his pleasure to find some kinship with this strange, little woman.

Max looked a perplexed at his sudden enthusiasm, her thin eyebrows jumping together as she gazed at him. "All right," she muttered, pushing away from the door until she was a step closer to him, the top of her head a good foot underneath his, her living, breathing body within reach if he only choose to touch her….

"Sounds like a plan," she said and then breezed past him.

Gabriel clenched his fingers into fists, the fine, dark hairs on his arm standing on end.

_Too close_, he told himself. _And yet not close enough. _

He followed her outside.

* * *

They decided they wouldn't go far. It was late, close to three in the morning, and even the light of the full moon seemed uncertain as it bled the desert colorless with pale shadows. Max didn't want to leave Jack alone for long, so she led Gabriel to the old bridle path that went behind the house and curved away past the paddocks. The walk would take them an hour if they hurried, although as soon as they were on the trail, which hadn't been properly maintained in years and was littered with rocks and branches and tiny burrows, they intentionally slowed their pace. Whatever urgency had driven them from the house died away quickly, leaving their steps heavy and hesitant.

Gabriel felt himself ease into the steady rhythm of walking. The constant movement of his feet over the rough terrain cleared the bothersome cobwebs from his mind. His thoughts turned meditative and his spirit and stilled as the great tide of his worry ebbed. The night was soft and drowsy. Misty. Shapeless shadows crawled in-between the stunted shrubs and scattered rocks and colored the space between Max and him, the small, but definite barrier.

But such thoughts were treacherous. Gabriel dispelled them swiftly, casting them back into the gloom where they belonged as he forced his head to empty. And although he was practiced in control, although he knew how to ignore the useless ramblings of an unchained mind, he found it difficult to concentrate whenever Max stood by him, whenever she was near enough to touch….

As it was, the woman also seemed to be in a reflective mood. She walked next to the large angel, coming close enough, at times, to press the sharp edge of her shoulder against his flank as she side-stepped to avoid the debris on the trail. Her expression, Gabriel observed, wasn't so harried as determined. There was no peace in her eyes, but a faint, restless stirring, a resistance to apathy that gave her features a hardened cast, molding worried lines into her brow and pinching her lips. And even now, in the middle of the desert, at the very end of the world, she still wore her policewoman's uniform, still wore the shield and the dark shirt with the patch sewn onto the shoulder and the heavy belt with her gun hostler and handcuffs and flashlight.

It was an act of defiance, Gabriel realized. Her uniform had assumed an identity that she took solace in, that she obviously found comforting. As he walked besides her, he developed the habit of sneaking cautious glances at the woman, watching the way she swung her arms when she moved, the way she trembled when the wind swept down upon them from the mountains, the way she turned her head back to the house every now and then, guarding her little nephew with unparalleled ferocity.

And as Gabriel studied her, as he noticed every facet of her form and face and figure, he saw that she was missing something. Her neck was bare. The St. Michael medal was gone.

He didn't know why, but the discovery pleased him, assuaged some of the roiling jealousy that had taken hold in the pit of his stomach, the envy he even now denied.

But then she turned her head away from him, obscuring his view of her neck. They had come to the end of the trail and the path looped back, meandering over the flatlands as it stretched around towards the tiny house and the empty paddocks.

Max stopped at the curve in the trail, jamming her hands in her pockets. She was looking at the land beyond, at the space of wild, untamed nature. Rock and shrub. Windswept sand and dust. And the mountains, far-off, veiled in a gossamer moon mist.

"I guess I was lying," she said, her eyes widening as she took in the stark landscape. "I don't really hate this place. It's kind of nice when you think about it. And kind of sad."

"Hallowed," Gabriel said, adding his own opinion. "There is a terrible beauty in the places man hasn't ravaged."

"Like the Garden of Eden?" Max offered.

"Yes," Gabriel replied. "Like that."

They let the quiet envelope them for a minute, smother them like an unwanted shroud. And then Gabriel remembered something. He remembered what he had wanted to ask her.

"I have a question," he said, keeping the tone of his voice low. "Will you answer it for me?

Max half-turned, plunging the right side of her face into shadow. "Feel like playing twenty questions, do you?"

He lifted his head. "I do not-"

"Relax." She emitted a weary sort of chuckle. "I was only joking. Sure. Why not? Ask me anything."

Gabriel raised a brow. The sudden change in her nature, her open, carefree turn of phrase, surprised him. Tonight, he thought, was a night of closed windows and locked hearts. Of barred minds and resistance. He himself did not feel inclined to be open, but rather, guarded his own treacherous secrets with a strange possessiveness. His thought were weighed down with an unnatural burden and Gabriel feared that if he opened his mouth, if he probed and questioned and sought vulnerability where there should only be strength, he would welcome a dangerous sort of truth.

But Max was willing to be honest and he decided to take his courage from her. Her self-assuredness steadied him somehow and Gabriel felt his resolve rally.

Flicking his tongue along his lips, he looked towards the moon, which was even now losing some of its silver radiance as it drifted closer to the horizon. Time, he felt, was against him.

"The other day," he began slowly, "you quoted Shakespeare to Jeep and Charlie. I did not think you would be familiar with his work."

Her potent umbrage, which followed quickly upon the heels of his question, left him in a state of shock.

"Why? Because I'm a dumb, blue-collar cop," she shot back, her arms immediately crossing her waist in challenge.

"No!" Gabriel took a step towards her, instinct urging him to soothe her and allay her unfounded assumption. "That was certainly not what I meant."

Max raised her left shoulder in a shrug. "Yeah, well, I get that a lot. Even my sister-"

"Your sister?" he prompted.

Max shook her head. "Never mind. Let's talk about Shakespeare. I don't like Shakespeare myself, but that doesn't mean I've never read him. In college I minored in English. Took a bunch of literature classes. Drama was one of them. I don't know, there's something about Shakespeare that's overrated."

"Agreed," Gabriel said, even though he had no idea what he was agreeing with. Human literature did not interest him, but it was pleasant to converse with Max, and for some odd, undefined reason, he wanted her to believe that he was truly interested in what she had to say. Her language, though plain and plebian, was invigorating in its abruptness. He enjoyed the way she cut off her words and spoke in short, choppy sentences, her tongue forming the phrases and spitting them out before she even seemed ready to begin.

"Tell me more about your college," he said, worrying that his own speech patterns were too stilted for her ears.

Max laughed again. "Why do you want to know?"

Gabriel didn't have a ready answer. Instead, he studied the awkward patterns in the hard-packed desert soil. There was a small burrow hole nearby and he wondered just what sort of animal was slumbering beneath in its den. A field mouse, perhaps. Or a snake….

Max moved her weight from one foot to the other, causing her hips to shift beneath the bulk of the police belt. Her gun had been safely returned to its holster.

"I don't know," she said, working her words around a sigh, "I never liked college. Maybe that's why I didn't bother to go to graduate school like Laurie did. You know, now that I mention it, I remember that drama class more clearly than the others. We read a lot of plays. There was this one by Samuel Beckett-I don't care for him either, by the way-called _The Endgame_. It was all about waiting, waiting to die, waiting for the end. And there is nothing to do while you wait. Just mindless tedium. Just the heaviness of knowing that everything is about to end and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. When I was a young kid in college I thought Beckett was full of crap. I mean, there's always something, isn't there? Now I'm not so sure. Now it kinda seems like there's nothing left…nothing left but the waiting."

Max trailed off and rubbed her arms fiercely. Gabriel wondered if she was cold.

"Do you think there is anything left?" she asked him at length.

This time, he had a ready answer for her. "You have Jack," he said, echoing his earlier sentiments, the same, simple words he thought would give her failing human heart hope.

"Jack," Max said. She had turned and was facing him fully now, her features caught in the dying moonlight which cast a sharp shadow along smooth cheeks and curved jaw. Her unkempt blond hair, which usually fell down to her shoulders, was pulled back in a messy ponytail at the base of her neck, making her look tired and drawn and washed out. Pitifully faded.

"He is a good boy," Gabriel said, thinking of the child now, the scrawny, unassuming child who might very well have the mind of a prophet. It all seemed like a dreadful paradox…one that reminded him of yet another unanswered riddle.

"I have noticed," he continued on, choosing his words carefully, opting for delicacy in what was an increasingly sensitive conversation, "I have noticed that you have a fair amount of maternal instinct about you. How is it, I wonder, that you never bore any children of your own?"

"Kids?" Max pushed her chin down to her unbuttoned shirt collar. The movement was defensive, a tortoise ducking inside its shell, a rabbit darting within its hole. "I don't know, I'm not exactly mommy material."

And as Gabriel observed her, as he studied her sudden modesty, her reticence, he thought he caught a sign of something deeper. Something that pulsed just below the surface. Something that was raw and volatile and very real. Something he perhaps should have noticed before but had been blind to up until now.

"I beg to differ," he said slowly, his eyes stinging as a bitter wind rose, howling out its agony as it swept along the still sleeping desert. "You are a consummate mother. You would sacrifice your life for that child."

Max shook her head. "But he's only my nephew."

Gabriel, however, would not be deterred by her feeble explanation. "Come now," he said. "There is little reason to deny your gift for nurturing. I saw the way you looked at Charlie's little son. Motherhood suits you, Max. It lives and breathes in your soul. It stirs in your eyes whenever you glance at Jack. You have wished for children of your own, that I can tell. It is a mark upon your countenance. Even a fool might see it. Even a fool might know that-"

"All right." She put up her hand to stop him, her fingers looking pale and boney against the dark of the night. "All right," she repeated, sucking in a shuddering breath. "Yes, I'd like to have kids, but it hasn't happened. I haven't…I haven't had time to find a decent guy or get married-"

"I do not see what time has to do with the matter," Gabriel interrupted. He gazed at her sorrowfully, hating the way she shrank away and folded into herself, resisting some uncomfortable truth that he did not yet understand. He wanted to reach out to her then, to touch her hollow cheeks and tangled hair and run his fingers along the gentle curve of her jaw. Just to touch her…just to touch….

"It's not that easy, you know," Max blurted out. "I work long hours. I have a stressful job. Marriage and…and love aren't things that you can just wish for, that you can just pray for. Believe me, I've tried."

Gabriel's senses were alive now, attuned to her empty excuses . He dared to approach her, coming close enough to tower over her, to consume her with his overwhelming, otherworldly presence.

"I believe," he said, a small, useless smile cracking the corner of his mouth, "that you humans have a word for such occasions. Bullshit. You're talk is _bullshit_."

Max's jaw snapped open, her mouth yawning wide as she gaped at him. Her incredulity was violent, as was her anger, which broke over them both with the unforgiving power of a tidal wave.

And Gabriel realized then that he had wounded her, had hurt he because he had unturned the final stone to reveal her greatest weakness, her deepest and most lasting sorrow.

But Max obviously wasn't ready to go down without a fight.

_Determination_, Gabriel thought even as she railed against him. He could love her for it.

"Just who the _fuck_ do you think you are?" she asked him, throwing her head back until she resembled a rearing horse, a powerful mare with flaring nostrils and wide, wild eyes. "I don't know how you can stand there and just…just assume things. You talk about me like you know absolutely everything, every little thing about my life and what it's been like for me these thirty-six years I've lived and breathed and walked on this fucking horrible planet. I don't know if you find me interesting, if you think it's fun to poke around my brain and my heart and my soul. Maybe your kind do this sort of thing all the time. Maybe you're waiting to see me crack. Maybe you'd get a real kick outta seeing me squirm. What do I know, I'm just a dumb blue-collar cop who couldn't get her shit together and make it in the world like a real person. But I know one thing. I know I'm not gonna stand here and take such bullshit, yes, _bullshit _from you, even if you are an angel. And I'm sorry if that pisses you off, but you know what? That's too fucking tough. I'm tired of being a little pawn in your great, cosmic game. Because you have no idea what it's like….you…you have no idea what it's like to be human."

And just as suddenly as she had began, just as readily as she had picked up her sword to do battle with him, she stopped. Her strength deserted her. She fell silent and clenched her fists and shook her head and tensed her jaw to keep back the sobs. But even in her silence, she raged and her fury was a storm. The lashing of a troubled sea against a face-cliff. The flash of lightening. The long, moaning call of thunder. Gabriel realized then how false peace was, how intemperate. The sky might be clear and the wind might blow sweet and soft and the sun could shine from its highest point, but it was all a lie. A deception.

And looking at Max now, seeing her pant and pace and shake, he realized that there was more truth to this moment than there had been a few nights before when she had cried in his arms. When she had confessed her sins to him. When she had sought redemption and healing. Her choked sobs, her weakness, her complete and utter acquiescence paled when held against the violence of her doubt. The unforgiving, merciless flood of her regret and fear.

She was standing before him on the desert plain, striped nude, a creature of painful vulnerability and insecurity and shame and forgotten hope.

And this moment, yes, this moment of rage, of agonized, tortured protest, came from her soul. From the innermost room, the deepest well of her humanity. It was her strength and her weakness. Her triumph and her defeat. She was alive and she was dying. She was reaching towards him and yet falling away, falling back into the dark.

A roar sounded in Gabriel's ears, drowning out even his heartbeat which had begun to trumpet in his chest.

This moment, yes, this moment was theirs. Hers. His. And he must surrender to it.

He stood still, stood quietly, his body like the great standing stones of the Celtic isles. Immovable. Ageless. Lashed by wind and rain and even hellfire. And as he stood, as he stood so close to her, to her trembling, shaking, tormented little body, he felt the last of his restraint give way and he readily surrendered. He surrendered at last.

"Yes," he said, speaking with the same voice he had used to instruct prophets and to whisper to sleeping children and to deliver the most glad tidings to a beautiful, blessed Virgin. "Yes," Gabriel said. "I do not know what it is to be human."

Max looked at him, her expression reflecting no little amount of distrust. She was judging him, considering him, attempting to see past his celestial shell to what lived inside him, the doubt and worry and fear that beat within his breast, the love as well.

But even she did not have the strength to see him as he truly was.

She turned away. She put her back to him. She crossed her arms over her middle and faced the east, faced the wispy traces of clouds that drifted over the horizon and caught the first light of the dawn. Faced the slow, steady ascent of the sun which bleached the black from the night sky, turning it a milky, uneven blue. Faced the coming of another day, of another long, desperate stretch of waiting and ruined hope and shattered, broken dreams.

But even while the world waited, even while it breathed and sighed and floundered in the nothingness of a shriveled existence, the sun still rose, the moon still fell and life continued on. It was a faint pulse. A dying heartbeat, but a heartbeat nonetheless. And Gabriel found some promise in it, if only because he could find nothing else.

The shadowy silver of the moonlight that had colored Max's face and made her look death-like and wooden was gone now and Gabriel saw the full flush of the dawn warm her flesh and put blood into her cheeks and fire into her eyes.

She looked to the side, offering him a view of her profile, her long nose and thin, taut lips giving her an air of solemn dignity. The storm was waning and once again, she stood before him as tired, lonely woman. A woman driven only by instinct and determination and the love of a child that was not even hers.

"I want you tell me something," she said to him. "I want you to tell me what it's like to be an angel."

And Gabriel could only think of something Michael had said to him, some insignificant little thing that had been muttered in a moment of equal desperation and despair.

"A burden," he said.

Tears formed in Max's eyes. "Do you feel guilt like we do?"

"Yes."

"Then you understand," she said, her voice thick, a sob rising up in her throat even as she tried to choke it back down. "Then you understand how sick I feel…in my mind. Gabriel, I think I've made a mistake. I think I did the wrong thing. Those two young kids, Charlie and Jeep, I don't know if I should've sent them and their baby away. If I'm such a good mother then why did a turn a helpless infant away? I don't know. Gabriel, Gabriel, please help me, please tell me, did I do the right thing?"

_Here it was_, he thought. _Yes, here it was_. And even as he stepped towards her, even as he moved into the eager light of the morning sun, Gabriel thought of what his brother had told him so many, many times before.

_They are just lost. It is our place to guide them._

But he did not know how to guide Max. And so he kissed her instead.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I think this is the first time I've ever given a substantial description of what Max looks like. Most of the time, I prefer to let readers form an image for themselves, but for those of you who are curious, I have to say, I've always pictured Max looking slightly like Milla Jovovich from the _Resident Evil _series.

In the next chapter, Max reacts to Gabriel's kiss. Jack confronts his aunt and demands to know exactly how his parents died, leading Max to suspect the worst of Gabriel. With any luck, chapter fourteen should be posted in roughly 10-12 days.

Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I cherish any and all feedback. Take care and be well!

**P.S. **I'm currently putting the finishing touches on a Michael/OC one-shot entitled _Hallelujah_. If any of you are interested, it should be posted by the end of the week. ^_^


	14. Chapter Fourteen Power Failure

**Author's Note: **Oh my goodness. Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews I received for chapter thirteen. I'm so thrilled to hear that so many people are enjoying this story. Thank you **ArmoredSoul, Yes-Man, Fyrefly, little biscuit, Lexicon, saichick, moondawntreader, WithLoveFromTorchwood, mynameistolong, SailorMoon20114486 **and **dark's silver shadow**. And thank you to everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author's alerts. I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Fourteen Power Failure**

Gabriel kissed her.

A small, naive part of him had wished for the moment to be perfect. A moment in which the unfulfilled became fulfilled. A moment in which he could be innocent and not a hardened warrior. A moment in which his apathy, his stoicism, his painful detachment, could finally be repaid with…could be repaid with….

Nothing. No, he could hope for nothing.

He had pulled Max to him, his hands resting beneath her shoulder blades, his lips on hers, exerting a gentle pressure. He had felt the chapped skin of her mouth, had heard the sound of her teeth grinding together as she set her jaw, as she stiffened and tensed, as she pulled away…

…away from him.

Max put her hands on his chest and pushed, pushed with all her might until she had broken free from the circle of his hands, until she had tripped and staggered and fallen back, her body reeling wildly, her arms flailing.

"What…what…" Her chin wobbled, her mouth, her hard, unforgiving lips parting as she addressed him. "What are you doing to me?"

Max's voice was ragged, jumping an octave higher as she stumbled on the tiny rocks and the uneven terrain of the trail. "What are you trying to do?" The accusation was there, along with the fear.

And Gabriel felt all the tenderness in him dissolve, only to be replaced by harsh, dark shame.

"I do not know," he replied, giving her the truth because he had nothing else, no reason and even less motive. There was absolutely no method to his madness. Only instinct. Only a primitive reaction he had buried, had ignored until he had convinced himself that it didn't exist…didn't exist at all.

"I do not know," the angel repeated, each word feeding his panic. His mind was lost. His thoughts were uncontrollable. And Gabriel could only feel the immediate, the rush of regret, the sorrow at her rejection.

Rejection. Rejection. He wrestled with the concept. There was no cause for rejection. He felt nothing. And he had given her nothing. This was…this was a mistake. This was…this was…

...salvation.

_No. NO! _

His breath came hard, the pressure in his lungs building, throwing his ribcage against his breast until he thought he wouldn't be unable to contain himself.

And Max, strong, resistant Max, the woman who had weathered the worst of the storm, who had stood against the very wrath of God and survived, now looked as though she would cry.

"You don't know?" she asked, throwing his words back at him. "I…I can't even _fathom_ this," she muttered, revulsion rendering her narrow features ugly. "This…this, what is this?"

"I do not know," Gabriel murmured, but the phrase seemed to incense her. "I am sorry," he amended, his jaw locking as he tried to speak, his tongue becoming as thick and heavy as wet clay. "I did not mean to offend you."

And he hadn't. He had only meant to…only meant to….

Comfort her, perhaps? Comfort himself? Gabriel couldn't decide, did not want to decide, although he did wonder if it all had something to do with love…with love.

_No. God, oh God. No!_

Max was still moving away from him, her hands crossed over her middle, although her posture did not suggest defiance as much as defense. "Offend me?" she said. "You've gotta be kidding me, it feels like blasphemy. Is that even allowed? Can you even do that?"

Gabriel shut his eyes, but only because he wished to disguise the sudden rush of tears that fell upon him, rupturing what remained of his resolve. "I do not know," he said truthfully, trying to work his mouth around the awkward words. "I have never…I have never done that before." But his explanation fell flat, echoing with pathetic insecurity.

Max arched a brow, her eyes wide, the red-streaked whites showing around her watery, grey pupils.

"So you thought you'd give it a shot with me?" she spat. "Thought you'd toy with me?" Her shoulders were hunched and she curled into herself, pulling the scattered threads of her being together as she watched him with the same haunted look of a hunted beast. "I can't even begin to comprehend this," she uttered breathlessly. "I can't even… I can't even imagine…it's not fair."

This shocked him, threw him even more off-balance. His mind reeled, and at once, Gabriel felt as though he had finally fallen over the precipice and was even now hurtling towards the abyss. And he could not catch himself, could not spread his broken wings and fly.

"I don't understand," he said, admitting, at last, his fatal weakness. He _did_ feel weak in that moment. Bewildered. Sanity blurred with the unreal, with the unbelievable, and Gabriel was still falling, tumbling through the veil.

And the air still had the feel of the inevitable to it.

If only he had returned home with Michael….

"This isn't fair," Max repeated, her chest heaving, the veins in her neck like taut cords as she struggled to swallow a sob. "You can't do this to me. It's not right. It's cruel."

"Cruel," Gabriel echoed, his senses sharpening, fighting through the fog of disillusionment, reaching for reality. "I did not mean to be cruel," he said, although he did not understand how his actions, his gentleness, the softness of his lips on hers, could ever be considered cruel. "I would not harm you. I would never harm you, Max."

She turned on him, a rabid dog, teeth flashing. "Don't use my name!"

Gabriel's mouth opened, but he was mute. His shame, his fresh stain of embarrassment, gave way to acute and very real terror. Absolute, utter horror.

What had he done…what had he done to make her hate him so….

_Everything_, a small voice told him and Gabriel could have wept.

His control disintegrated, the stone of his resolve turning to sand. When the wind rose, it took the meager grains from him and scattered them afar on the plains, leaving him with only the throb of fear and regret festering inside him.

Gabriel's throat constricted. His collar tightened around his neck. There was something wet on his cheeks, some droplets of water that tasted like salt when they hit his lips.

Gabriel wept. Silently, with what dignity he could muster. He did not bother to shield his tears, but he did turn his head, looking towards the rising sun, praying that the first light of dawn would burn off his fetid shame and leave him whole once more. But the sun this morning was colorless, a great, pale disk that hung like a lonely bauble in the sky.

Gabriel felt a cry of distress rise in this throat. He clamped his jaw shut, emitting only the faintest moan.

Max watched him. "Oh God," she whispered. Her prayer was that of the forlorn. The forgotten. The forsaken. She uncrossed her arms and let them hang by her sides, a gesture of defeat. "Oh God."

He was not prepared for what came next.

"Do you love me?" Max asked him. The dawn had flushed the sky with color, driving back the dark until the far-off mountains shed their mist and the remaining clouds shone white again. And Max stood with the dawn, the fear leaving her face until there existed a bare sort of honesty and perhaps, just perhaps, a small seed of hope.

A hope that he would crush.

Gabriel did not answer her. The question was too dangerous and his heart was unreliable. He thought if he spoke, if he dared to open his mouth and let the words slip past his lips, the end would come. The world would not right itself. And Max would hate him.

If only because he loved her.

Yes, there it was. Silent acknowledgement. Acceptance. But even as the truth came to him, Gabriel recoiled at the sight of it, at the smell and taste of it.

_No_. _No. _

He could not allow himself, he could not…he could never….

_Never. _

And so he set his jaw. And so he locked his heart. And so he tried to forget, tried to forget.

But God, oh God, he could not.

Max had apparently grown impatient with him. Her nose wrinkled, her nostrils dilating as if she had caught the scent of his ugly weakness. She shook her head, as if affirming some private doubt. "It doesn't matter, I suppose," she said when she realized he would not respond. "I've never been in love either."

_Love. _Gabriel flinched at the sound of the word. _Love. _How was it that Max had the courage to say it while he himself did not?

Because this was not love. It couldn't be. No, this…this was nothing.

The woman suddenly seemed restless, her fingers twitching, her head snapping around on her shoulders with a sharp jerk.

"I'm going back to the house," she told him, her words stinking of defeat and the urgent need to retreat. Max turned down the path, putting her back to him, one hand pressed to her brow as she worked her way along the detritus-strewn trail, as she drifted farther and farther from him.

But Gabriel couldn't let her go. Even now, he couldn't watch her walk away.

He followed her, followed her like a dumb, mongrel pup. Their trip back to the house was exceedingly awkward. Gabriel moved in her shadow. The woman refused to look at him. It was an awful sort of truce.

When they got closer to the empty paddocks, Gabriel quickened his pace, coming as near to her as he dared. He kept a good foot between them, afraid that his damaged self-control would fall to pieces once more and he would do something foolish.

Because despite it all, despite her refusal and despite his shame, he wanted to pull her into his embrace again, to renew the moment that had been the lost, the moment he had been waiting for…the moment he had prayed for….

But he stopped himself, dispelling the treacherous shreds of longing. Gabriel looked at Max and forced himself to be impartial, but the break wasn't clean. A thread had been stretched between them, that early sense of communion transforming into something larger, into something greater and entirely steadfast.

He knew he was trembling as he walked besides her, his weakness manifesting itself physically even as he sought to retain his dignity.

"Max," he said, her name sticking in his throat as he spoke. "I only want to say-"

"Please." She shook her head, keeping her pace quick. They were almost at the garage. "Don't talk to me right now."

And as she pulled away from him again, as she trotted up to the house and ducked inside the garage, Gabriel remembered something. The most insignificant thing. The most inconsequential, meaningless memory.

He remembered the night he had awoken in Max's garage, handcuffed to a pipe, his wounds stitched, his mind and heart and soul adrift, wandering in the realm of unforgiving oblivion. He had been sitting there, brooding, acting the part of the tormented soul, the betrayed brother, when he had first heard the music. The human music that grated on his angelic ears. The music he would forevermore link to Max. The music that had now become sacred to him.

_God it's so painful, when something that's so close, is still so far out of reach.*_

Gabriel repeated the words to himself, standing there outside the garage in the pitiless light of the dawn that tempted him with promise and hope but gave him nothing.

If only he had been close, he thought. If only _they_ had been close.

* * *

It took all of Gabriel's inner strength and resolve to enter the house. He did so rather cautiously, stealing inside like a thief, half expecting that Max would catch sight of him and cast him outside.

As it was, the woman had left the door leading into the kitchen open. As Gabriel stepped through it, he almost bumped into Max. She was standing in the hallway, one shoulder pressed to the sheetrock wall, attempting, the angel thought, to look casual. But when she moved aside, giving him a full view of the short corridor, he saw just what had prompted her sedate aura, or rather, just who.

Jack was standing by his bedroom door. His appearance was bedraggled, his eyes blinking away the last of his dreams.

"Where were you?" the boy asked his aunt groggily. "I woke up and you weren't here."

"Sorry, bud," Max replied a little breathlessly. She ran a hand through the loose strands of hair falling out of her ponytail. "I really didn't mean to scare you like that-"

"I wasn't scared."

"Gabriel and I went for a walk," she said and to her credit, her voice betrayed absolutely no emotion, no sign that anything was amiss.

Gabriel, for his part, was impressed.

"We didn't go far," Max rattled on. "Only up the old trail and back. But why did you shut the lights off? I left them on for you." She paused and looked around, craning her neck so that she could see into the kitchen.

Gabriel followed her gaze, realizing, at once, that something was wrong. The subtle hum of electricity, the buzzing of the old light bulbs and the low, steady growl of the refrigerator had ceased, only to be replaced with…silence.

"What the hell?" Max muttered, brushing past Gabriel as though he were a shadow and not a formidable three hundred pound archangel standing in her way. "The lights are out in here too," she noted as she paced around the kitchen.

Taking a step towards the fridge, she pulled the door opened and groaned. "Shit."

Gabriel's nose twitched, detecting the obnoxious odor of spoilt milk.

Jack tip-toed down the hall and joined his aunt in the kitchen. "Hey, there's water all over the floor," he said, pointing at a sizable puddle that had collected near the fridge, diluting the aged grime on the sticky linoleum into a brownish stain.

Max slammed the refrigerator door closed, cursing under her breath again. "The stuff in the fridge is no good now," she muttered, her brows jumping together as she grimaced. "The whole house must be out. I have to check the fuse."

And once more, she pushed past Gabriel, the sleeve of her left arm trailing over his stomach, grazing the place where the sutures still stretched across his gut.

He winced, but not from pain.

With Max gone, the tension in the room dissipated, leaving the air stale with the rancid stench of bad milk. Jack padded into the living room and dropped down into the rocking chair, his expression solemn and drained.

The angel took in his pale, drawn features, his tired, dog-sad eyes and offered the boy a sympathetic glance.

And the child, ever perceptive, his intuition more obvious now that Gabriel knew what he was, only shrugged impassively.

"I'm all right," Jack said. "Though I was looking forward to having a bowl of cereal for breakfast."

Gabriel drifted towards the living room, remembering how the boy had offered to share his sandwich with him when Max had kept him locked in the garage. The gesture had been simple, but enough to shake his seemingly fixed belief in the worthlessness of the human race.

Gabriel tried to smile for Jack now, silently thanking him for that tiny act of grace.

"Your aunt is worried about you," he told the child.

Jack looked at him carefully, his brown eyes narrowing. "Yeah," he said at length. "But you're worried about her too, aren't you?" A pause, then. "Is that why you're crying?"

Gabriel started, recalling the moisture on his cheeks. Raising his hand, his used the side of it to swipe at his errant tears. But no explanation for his emotion could be given to Jack, for the angel had none.

Luckily, the boy displayed wisdom beyond his years and said nothing, letting Gabriel have the quiet to compose himself, only the tiny, creaking sounds of the old house rupturing the reverent stillness.

Max returned to the kitchen a few minutes later, the soles of her dusty, scuffed shoes slapping through the puddles.

"It's not the fuse," she said, her chest expanding as she took a long, deep breath. "I'll bet you anything that the grid finally went down. We have no power, no electricity."

"But is it absolutely necessary?" Gabriel asked softly, daring to address her.

How strange it was, he mused, that this little woman could almost make him feel like a coward.

Almost. Not quite, but close enough.

Max bristled when he spoke to her. She turned her head to the side, staring at the kitchen table and the trio of maple wood chairs clustered about it, her teeth closing over her bottom lip. "There's a powerhouse," she said slowly, "not too far from here."

"You have candles," Gabriel replied, even though he knew she wasn't speaking to him. "You have matches. Is that not sufficient?"

Max folded her arms across her middle, her features pensive. She was thinking.

"Jack," the woman said after a long minute, "get dressed. We're going for a drive."

The boy didn't argue, but rose silently and slipped out of the room. With her nephew gone, Max spared Gabriel a fleeting look, something that could have possibly been meant as a warning…if only her eyes hadn't been so frightened.

Again the words rose to his lips, his pleas for forgiveness, for understanding. But Gabriel held his tongue and kept his peace, letting Max pace nervously through the kitchen. After all, he'd done quite enough damage already.

And he couldn't risk losing her entirely, couldn't let her slip away….

It would destroy him if he lost her, he realized and the thought shamed him. How weak he had become, just like these feeble, worthless humans.

Worthless. Perhaps _he_ was worthless.

Gabriel brooded. Max brooded. And they both stood apart. Far apart. The barrier had risen between them, and even Gabriel, who was blessed with wings, could not fly across the divide.

Nor did he wish to. Not now, at any rate. Perhaps not ever.

_He that troubleth his own house_, Gabriel thought, _shall inherit the wind.**_

And this little house, lost in the wilds of the Mojave, was already under siege.

When Jack entered the kitchen again, he was wearing his hooded jacket and sneakers, his hands tucked deep into the pockets of his jeans.

"Where are we going?" he asked his aunt. "To the powerhouse?"

Max waved a hand at him. "Come on. Let's go."

Jack hesitated. "Is this safe?"

But Max, apparently, did not hear him. Without a word, she ushered the boy out the door to the garage and within a minute, Gabriel heard the squad car start, the tires squealing as they skidded along the concrete floor. The crunch of gravel followed, the hum of the engine growing fainter as the car pulled out of the driveway and turned towards the road.

The air stilled, the world righted itself, and what remained was the overwhelming echo of emptiness, the poor promise of relief and respite.

Feeling numb, Gabriel seated himself at the kitchen table, placing his trembling hands on his lap.

_It is over, _he told himself. _Yes, it is finally over._

Turning his head to the side, he glanced at his mace, looking ridiculously out of place while propped up against the ratty sofa. And in seeing the weapon, seeing a thing of violence, Gabriel realized that he should have never let them go alone.

* * *

As Max guided the squad car down the empty highway, she kept only one hand on the wheel. The other was pressed to her mouth, her fingers curled against her lips which still tingled…somewhat unpleasantly. A shiver traced her spine, because she knew, without a doubt, that she was in terrible trouble.

Terrible, awful, unforgivable trouble.

Because what Gabriel had done to her, what he had tried to do, was unforgivable. Right?

Max set her jaw, her teeth closing with a click. She had the driver's side window cracked, open just wide enough to allow a cold breeze to leak into the stuffy confines of the squad car. It was chilly outside but Max was flushed. Feverish. Even now, with a few good miles separating her from the old house…from Gabriel, she could still feel the pressure of his hands on her back. He had held her carefully when they stood together on the trail. _Tenderly_. It was horrible in a way, to see a creature of such brute power, of such incredible and vicious strength, attempting to be gentle.

For Max, it was a miserable paradox. She had grown to admire the angel's resilience, his seemingly tireless willpower and intensity. To see him sob and cry like a child, all because she had rebuffed him…God, oh God, she thought she might lose her mind.

The straight yellow lines dividing the two-lane highway blurred as Max's focus wavered and she began to picture Gabriel with tears on his sharp, defined cheeks.

She had never wanted to hurt him. In truth, she didn't think it was possible for a weak, fragile human to make an angel weep. But what else could she do? Let him kiss her?

No.

There was very little that Max was sure of these days, although she felt certain that what happened back on that lonely trail, that abandoned, overgrown pathway, was not allowed.

Not allowed.

Not allowed.

And yet…and yet….

Max dropped her hand from her lips and tightened it over the wheel. Why was he doing this to her? Or rather, why was she doing this to herself? Hadn't she learned a long time ago? Hadn't she realized that life wasn't like Noah's Ark? There weren't always two kinds of every animal. Not everyone was a match. Not everyone…not her.

It had started in high school, of course. Laurie had been a few years older than her sister, had begun to bring home boyfriends. And Max had envied her, because she was the quiet, withdrawn type of kid who liked to keep her head down and, as a result, didn't get asked to the prom.

That was twenty years ago. Laurie, predictably, had gotten married. Had a kid. Did everything right. And Max had joined the police force, moved into a tiny one bedroom apartment by herself and at thirty-six, had never been in love.

It was pathetic.

Anger bubbled and frothed within her. Max squinted her eyes against the glare of the sun as it hit the windshield.

She was thirty-six and had never been in love, and now…and now she had this angel, this sad, stoic creature who had held her in his arms and kissed her.

And she had made him cry.

_God, dear God. _

The squad car hit a pothole. Max was jolted out of her seat for an instant, the belt cutting into her lap.

"Shit," she muttered, straightening the wheel.

"You ran right over that one," Jack said. "Didn't you even see it?"

"Huh?" Max glanced at her nephew out of the corner of her eye.

He was sitting in the passenger's side seat, one elbow pressed against the window, heavy, tired lids drooping over his eyes.

God, she'd been completely ignoring him. What the hell was the matter with her?

_Get your head in the game_, she berated herself. _Don't be a fuck up._

"Sorry about that, buddy," Max said, reaching over to rub her nephew's shoulder. "Are you all right? You hanging in there?"

It was a stupid question. Patronizing. And Jack knew it.

He rolled his bleary eyes in her direction and Max almost winced as she caught a quick look at him. The kid wasn't sleeping well lately. Why? A twinge of maternal concern registered within her, but she quickly pushed it away, remembering what Gabriel had told her the night before.

_Motherhood suits you, Max. _

Huh, yeah right. There was only one word for that. Bullsh-

Jack stirred in his seat, craning his small head so that he could see beyond the high dashboard. "How far is it to this place?" he asked.

"Uh." Max sucked in her breath through her teeth, making a hissing sound. "Not sure, really. I've never been there. But we'll find it, right? Just another adventure."

"I think I'd rather stay home. With Gabriel."

Her spine stiffened under the touch of another shiver. His name. She didn't even want to hear his name. The mere mention of it twisted her stomach into a painful knot and made her flesh crawl until she thought it would fall off her bones.

_I'm a wreck_, Max bemoaned silently. _I'm a mess._

She tried to take another deep breath, fighting the sickening wave of nausea that made her throat tighten, her gag reflex kicking in at the worst moment possible.

Somehow, Max got control of herself. She had to. For Jack. For her beautiful little nephew. He couldn't see her like this. He couldn't see her so afraid….

"Gabriel," she forced herself to say the angel's name. "You like him a lot, don't you? He's become your friend."

Jack stared plaintively at the long stretch of blacktop before them, his eyes half-shut to keep out the blinding light of the morning sun. "It's funny," the boy said, his tone unassuming, subtle. "It's funny to think that an angel can become friends with a human. I didn't think stuff like that happened."

"Me neither," Max conceded readily.

_His lips had been soft. Surprisingly soft. And warm._

"But he's my friend," Jack continued. He was fiddling with his seat belt now, turning the long, silvery-grey strap against his stomach. "He treats me like an adult and he tells me the truth."

Max felt her eyes widen, her instinct jumping to the fore as it set off a warning bell. The truth? The truth about what?

"You've lost me, kiddo," she said, keeping her expression casual as she took a minute to glance at Jack.

But the boy wouldn't look at her. He was suddenly uncomfortable, his scrawny shoulders pulling up almost to his ears. Hesitation seemed to grip him. "When are my parents gonna get here?" he asked at length. "You said they'd follow us out to Grandma's house. It's been more than a week. Why aren't they here yet?"

_Oh God_. Max's hands were slipping on the wheel, her palms greased with a nervous sweat. She was sick, she was going to be sick.

Now things were starting to make sense. Horrific sense. Of course Jack hadn't been sleeping lately. Of course he had become withdrawn. Solemn. Cold. Cold towards her…towards Max.

Although she had observed the changes in her nephew over the past few days, Max had attributed his depression to more likely causes. The kid had been through hell and back. They all had. Of course he'd lose some of his spunk. Of course he'd end up with a little PTSD. She'd seen it before. Terrible things did _terrible_ things to people. And if the horrors of a week ago had not yet caught up with Max, well, that was because _she_ was too caught up with Gabriel.

But Jack, poor, sweet Jack….

He had that dead-eyed look about him now. That washed out, faded stare. The trembling lips. The hollow, hopeless voice.

And he hadn't asked her about his parents lately because he already knew the truth. And he already knew the truth because Gabriel had told him, had told him everything.

Max was surprised when she felt the tears on her cheeks. She had trusted that angel. God, she had trusted him….

Blind rage threatened to overcome her sorrow, but before Max could completely lose it, Jack finally raised his eyes and looked at her, dropping her into silence.

"They're not coming, right?" the boy asked, his hope, his faith in her entirely gone. "They're not coming cause they're dead."

Her heart stopped. Or at least she thought it did. Max felt the edges of her existence shrivel, her mind pulling away from her body, her vision narrowing until all she could see were the yellow lines on the black, black road.

Gabriel…Gabriel….

She had trusted him. She had bared her soul to him. She had told him of Laurie and that perilous moment in the lobby of the apartment building, the moment when Max had pressed the barrel of a gun into her sister's stomach and fired. The blood…the screaming…the slow, yet inevitable pull of death…of death….

And Gabriel had held her in his arms. Had stood with her in the cold desert night on that broken trail and put his lips to hers, promising her the absolution she so sorely needed, she so desperately wanted.

And Max had loved-

"Max?" Jack's voice reached her, his tiny, tired voice.

She forced herself to look at him.

"Why did you lie to me Max?' Jack asked. "Why?"

"I…"

But she could not begin to answer him. The truth was a double-edged sword and it cut into her. Deeply. And she began to bleed.

Because Gabriel, yes Gabriel, had betrayed her.

"Max!"

She started, stirred into awareness by the shrill note of fear in her nephew's tone.

"Wh…what?" she stuttered numbly.

But the boy was struck dumb, his hand raised, one shaking finger pointing over the dashboard at the road.

Max looked ahead. And she saw it. Saw _them_.

There were about four of them. Four men standing in the middle of the highway. Behind them stretched the empty flatbed of a truck, positioned perpendicular to the road, blocking the way. It was impossible to drive around, even if Max swerved and went off onto the shoulder. To the right, the road dropped off into a severe ditch and to the left, the men had set up a make-shift fence built from scraps of metal and barbed wire.

And Max wasn't sure, but as the light of the morning sun glared down on them, she thought she caught sight of a glint of metal…the barrel of a shotgun.

_What have I done_, she wondered fleetingly, even as one of the men stepped forward, signaling for her to stop. She glanced at Jack sitting hunched down in the seat besides her, his fear evident.

_God help me, _she prayed. _God help us both. _

* * *

**Author's Note: **Eep! Was that another cliffhanger? I'm sorry. I honestly don't intend to end my chapters with cliffhangers…it just sort of happens. ^_^

Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you have a spare moment, please leave a review. Feedback always makes me smile. Chapter Fifteen is currently in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days, sooner if I can manage it. Until then, take care and be well!

_*This line comes from Tom Petty's "American Girl"._

_**This quote can be found in Proverbs 11:29_

_Lastly, the line "There was absolutely no method to his madness" was derived from "Though this be madness yet there is method in it" from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet'. _


	15. Chapter Fifteen The Inevitable

**Author's Note: **Here we are, another chapter, although I'm not so sure you guys are going to like this one. As always, I have to thank everyone who reviewed, **saichick, Lexicon, Fyrefly, XxAsteriskxX, Yes-Man, Armored Soul, little biscuit, DarkLadyAthara, ita-chan01, **and **Morgan**. I'd also like to thank everyone who added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you, all! You guys are beyond awesome. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Fifteen The Inevitable **

Max's stomach dropped, her blood freezing and filling with ice as the fear grew inside her. Grew and grew and grew. She had trouble holding the wheel straight, her hands slipping as the chill reached down through her finger bones, turning them into icicles. She was going to lose control. She was going to lose control if she did not calm down…if she did not calm down right now.

_Stop. Stop._

Max breathed in. And then she breathed out. And then she told herself that everything was going to be okay. Jack was safe. She was safe. They were both in the car and she was armed.

_But the odds are against you_, a shrill, sinister voice sounded in her mind. _Four against two. Do the math, Maxie. They have shotguns. You have a handgun and a scared little kid. _

Oh God.

Instinctively, she put some light pressure on the brake, slowing the squad car down as they neared the blockade. Jack was huddled in the seat next to her, his hands braced on the dashboard. It hurt Max to look at him, to see his eyes wide with the promise of terror, of blank, wretched, deer-in-the-headlights terror.

And she had done this to him. It was all her fault. _Her fault._

No, not yet. Not yet. They could get out of this still, if only Max kept her head about her. If only she stayed smart and played it safe. She was a cop, after all. She'd spent fourteen grueling years on the streets of L.A. She'd tackled knife-wielding suspects and kicked down doors and even jumped into a flooded drain to save a guy who'd been drowning. And she'd also killed people. Put her finger to the trigger. Bang bang, you're dead.

And she could kill these men now if she had to. Kill them in cold blood and not feel a bit of regret. Because she had Jack to look after, Jack who was everything to her, the balm to her lonely heart, the child she never had….

And she would kill to keep her kid safe.

She forced her fingers to grip the steering wheel. The sun coming in through the windshield bleached the scars on her knuckles. Her battle scars. The marks of blood shed and blood spilt.

But maybe it wouldn't come to that today. Maybe the men would be reasonable. Maybe their intentions weren't even criminal in the first place. And maybe, just maybe, Gabriel would come. Maybe their angel would swoop down from the sky on his lethal black wings with his forty-pound mace in hand and save them all.

_Unlikely_, Max told herself even as she began to hope. _You know that's pretty fucking unlikely._

Gabriel didn't even now where they had gone. And if he did, she doubted he'd be in the mood to come chasing after them. She'd broken his heart, after all, hadn't she?

She'd broken his heart.

They were closer to the blockade now and Max could see the barbed wire stretching over the makeshift wall like the coils of a silver snake. The parked truck stretched the span of the road and she noticed two of the men perched on the empty flatbed, looking like bored children with guns lying across their laps. There was another man in a flannel shirt and vest standing by the door of the truck. Unlike the others, he wasn't armed with a shotgun, but rather, had a small pistol that he clutched in his right hand. The fourth man, the one who had signaled for her to stop, stood smack in the middle of the highway, his features obscured by a dirty baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. And even though she couldn't completely make out his face, Max could swear that he was smiling. Smiling at her with a predatory, crocodile grin.

And in seeing him, in seeing the four of them so close by, she felt an unlikely wave of calm wash over her. Her focus narrowed. Her heartbeat slowed. Her breathing steadied. She could do this. She had to…for Jack.

Schooling her expression until it was nearly deadpan, Max looked at her nephew. "Did you ever drive a car?" she asked him quietly.

Jack shook his head, his mouth flapping open. "Dad used to let me sit in his lap when I was just a baby and turn the steering wheel. But we were only in the garage and the car wasn't even on."

"That's all right," Max replied. "I'm going tell you what you need to do now. It's easy."

"Why? Why do I have to drive, Max?"

"Listen to me," she cut-in. "If anything happens, if I get hurt or the men won't let me leave or they try to come after you, here's what I want you to do. You get in the driver's seat and you pull the gearshift back until it's in reverse. See where the little R is? Yeah, that's right. You put it in reverse and you step on the gas…hard. The gas is the smaller pedal. You step on it hard and you hold the wheel as straight as you can and you keep going back…you keep going back even if you have to run someone over, understand? You keep going back until you're far away and you don't see the men anymore. Then, when you can, put the car in drive and turn around. You drive back to Gram's house and you find Gabriel and he'll take care of everything, all right, bud? You get all that?"

Again, Jack shook his head. "I can't leave you-"

"You can," Max told him. She applied more pressure to the brake, bringing the car to a full stop in front the man with the baseball cap.

This was it. The breathless moment of hesitation. The pause before the battle. Before the inevitable.

The prayer to St. Michael rose in her mind and was on her lips, but then she thought of another angel, the one who's heart she had broken.

_Gabriel, _Max prayed, shutting her eyes for an instant in silent supplication. _Please take care of Jack for me. Please._

She opened her eyes. Saw the guns. Saw Jack.

_Please_, she begged one last time. _Please. _

The man in the baseball cap stepped forward, shuffling his shotgun somewhat clumsily until he had jammed the butt of it beneath his arm. With his free hand, he rapped his knuckles on the driver's side window.

Max eyed the weapon. Judging from the way he moved, the man wasn't too confident with his firearm. The long snout of the barrel was pointed towards the ground, but that didn't mean anything. Discreetly, she removed one of her hands from the wheel and laid it next to her own hostler.

Quick to the draw. She'd have to be very, very quick to the draw.

Sucking in some air, she rolled down her already cracked window the rest of the way and squinted up at the man. The sunlight cut rudely into her eyes.

"Hey," she said.

"Morning, Officer," the man replied. He was wearing a denim jacket and a pair of jeans with holes in the knees. The unpleasant odors of sweat, tobacco and something that could have been decay clung to his dirty clothing. "Didn't think there were any police left around here," he said, drawing out the word police with a lisp until it sounded like _po-lease_.

"Eh, they're a few of us," Max said, pulling a cool bluff.

The man pointed to her door, his gun dropping slightly. "The markings on your car say you're from L.A. That's a long drive."

"You're telling me." Max kept her expression calm, indifferent even. No reason for her to get jumpy yet. She didn't want the guy to pick up on her tense body language and misconstrue it. They were off to a good start, after all.

The man sighed, pushing back his baseball cap to reveal a pair of watery eyes and a sun-burnt forehead. "Things bad in the city?" he asked.

Max raised her right shoulder in a shrug. "Pretty bad." She paused, then added, "How about you guys? Has it been rough for you too?"

"Like hell," the man grated and suddenly, he leaned forward, draping his free arm over her open window.

Max fought the urge to recoil, though her fingers never left her gun.

"My name's Burt," he said, thrusting a greasy hand at her. "The guys on the flatbed are my brothers-in-law, Seth and Rick. And this kid here." He jerked his head in the direction of the man in the vest with the pistol, whom Max now realized could be no more than seventeen. "That's my son Jensen."

She forced herself to smile. "Max," she said, shaking Burt's hand.

"That your boy?" He moved to the right, trying to get a better look at Jack.

Max leaned forward, closer to the steering wheel in an attempt to block his view. A fierce wave of maternal protectiveness surged against her otherwise cautious sensibilities. If this guy even looked at Jack the wrong way, if he so much as breathed on him, she'd blow his fucking brains out.

"My nephew," she said simply.

Burt nodded and scratched at the blue stubble that dusted his weak nub of a chin. "You folks just passing through or are you here to stay?"

"Not sure," Max responded, unwilling to give a definite answer. She didn't want to let on that she had a secure house for herself and Jack. These men, who all stank of desperation and fear, would be drawn to their hide-out like moths to a flame. And for some reason, Max didn't think they'd be willing to share in her bounty.

The apocalypse, it seemed, brought out the worst in people.

"Well." Burt finally stood back, away from the vehicle. "If you're thinking of heading up to Red Ridge, I'd avoid it. The place was overrun with refugees a few days ago. Not enough food. Not enough water. Things got real bad real fast."

"I might've heard something about that," Max admitted.

Burt's mouth was set in a grim line, a few droplets of sweat forming on his upper lip. Max recognized the expression, his hard determination, his jittery, restless hands. Once more, she eyed his firearm.

Chances were, she could probably put a bullet in his head before he got his gun up and aimed it at her. But then again, she'd never been the best shot on the force. And what was the alternative if she missed? In her mind, she pictured bullets ricocheting wildly, hitting the windshield, breaking the glass, slicing through her flesh and through Jack…through Jack….

No, she'd only fire if she had to. If she absolutely had to.

"I guess it doesn't matter if you're at Red Ridge or not, though," Burt rattled on. He tugged at the brim of his baseball cap. "Things are the same everywhere. People are saying this is the end, the apocalypse or some kinda shit." He looked fleetingly at his son and for an instant, Max thought she saw some of her own worry, her sense own of devotion towards Jack mirrored in the man's eyes.

Maybe he wasn't looking to start trouble. Maybe he only needed help.

_Yeah, right. _Max knew that now wasn't the time to turn sympathetic. She'd have to be a hard-nosed bitch if she wanted to get out of this alive. If she wanted to save Jack, and maybe, just maybe, save herself.

"I don't know what this is," Max replied as she watched Burt shift his weight from foot to foot. The man was getting fidgety. Not good. Not good. The car was still in drive, she had her heel pressed down on the brake. Maybe she could get away now, swing the car around before they tried anything.

Before they started shooting.

_But it hasn't come to that yet_, Max told herself. _Just wait. Just watch. You'll get yourself killed if you act too quick. And then what will happen to Jack. Then what?_

Would these men kill a little kid? she wondered. There was no telling. There really was no way of telling.

Burt shuffled his feet some more, chewing on the side of his mouth. "I got a kid to take care of," he said, something of shame creeping into his gravely voice.

"Me too," Max replied automatically. She took a second to let her eyes slide towards Jack. Her nephew was staring straight ahead, his eyes on the flatbed. If only she could tell him that everything would be all right, if only….

"And my brothers-in-law," Burt was saying, "they all got kids too, so…."

And then it happened. She'd expected him to raise his gun, but he didn't, only reached inside the car with one of his greasy hands and slammed her head against the door. The hit was enough to stun Max, to push her to edge of unconsciousness. Vaguely, she was aware of Burt pulling her out of the car, of Jack calling her name over and over again in a panic-stricken tone.

Max blinked, seeing her limp legs stretched before her as they fell out of the car and onto the blacktop. Her cheek was pressed against the ground, tiny grains of sand sticking to her sweaty skin. And despite the winter chill, the earth was warm beneath her. Welcoming.

She began to drift away, aware only of a steady drip, drip, drip as blood began to leak from the new gash on her temple. It followed the curve of her face, pooling in the well beneath her nose and in her nostrils. The ugly scent of copper assaulted her. Everything…everything was slipping, falling.

_What have I done?_ Max thought even as the first of the blackness started to close over her. _What have I done to us? Jack…Jack. Gabriel, oh Gabriel._

The warm blood reached her lips and she thought of the angel. The archangel.

He had kissed her. Had kissed her because he loved her. And she, she had loved him….

_Gabriel. Gabriel. Protect the boy. Take care of him…._

_Jack! Jack!_

The blackness ebbed slightly, bringing her back to a limited awareness. She could hear someone moving around, pulling at the car door. And Jack was still screaming, God, still screaming.

_Drive, kid_, she thought even as her world blurred anew. _Get the hell out of here._

The roar of an engine startled some life back into her. Jack, she reasoned, must've gotten into the driver's seat and God bless that boy, he would make it…he would make it out alive.

She heard the sound of tires on the blacktop squealing as they came to a short stop. Max groaned, forcing her body to move. She needed to see Jack get away, she needed to know that her nephew was safe. Rolling over onto her side, Max raised her head as much as she could, the blast of cold winter air reviving her somewhat. The squad car was still in front of her and Burt was trying to climb through the door into the driver's seat. But there was someone else nearby, another car that hadn't been there before. _No_. Max blinked her bleary, aching eyes. It was a truck. A rusty old pick-up truck that had pulled up right behind the squad car.

And then Jeep was on the road, his body shielded by the open door of the truck, the gun in his hand leveled at Burt. Charlie stayed huddled in the cab, the top of her blonde head barely showing as she ducked under the dashboard.

"Get out of the car!" Jeep screamed. "Get away now!"

"Fuck," Burt growled. He drew back from the squad car, just enough to raise his shotgun at Jeep. "Get the hell outta here boy," he grunted. "This ain't your business."

"Like hell it is," Jeep rasped back.

And even then, lying on the ground with her head nearly split open, Max felt a wave of shame threaten to envelope her. Jeep was trying to help them, trying to help them even though she had turned him and Charlie and that little baby away.

Maybe the apocalypse didn't always bring out the worst in people.

"Get away from them!" Jeep repeated, his voice riding the current of the rising wind. "You and your friends need to step back right now!"

"Ah hell-" Burt began, but then he yelped.

It was Jack. The boy had scooted out of the passenger's seat only to kick the gun out of his hands. Burt was so surprised by Jack's sudden movement that he stumbled back from the squad car, dropping his shotgun like a discarded toy. Reeling, he tripped over the still prostrate Max and landed on top of her.

Max felt all the air rush out of her lungs as the man's full weight crushed her chest. She gasped, trying to roll over and push him off, but Burt wouldn't move.

Footsteps approached. The men standing by the truck were springing into action now, raising their guns at Jeep, who stood like some lone cowboy, outnumbered and surrounded in the unforgiving Mojave.

And in that instant, in that brief space of time when Max saw the men lifting their guns and saw Jeep crouched behind the door of his pick-up, she felt an infinite amount of sorrow fill her. True sorrow.

This was going to be a bloodbath. People were going to die here today.

The thought repulsed her, terrified her and she felt the first of her strength returning, the blinding pain in her head subsiding, giving way to the pulse of adrenalin, to the potent, intoxicating rush of renewed resolve.

"No!" Max cried out. With all her might, she shoved Burt, forcing the man off her even though their legs remained entangled. She tried to get to her feet, but the man was pulling at her, reaching for her belt even as she scrambled to her knees.

And then Max realized. Realized her fatal mistake. At the Police Academy, they'd always taught recruits to watch their guns around perps. It was standard procedure. Common sense. But now in the scuffle, in the frantic, panicked flailing, Max had left her right side open. And now, yes now, Burt had reached for her hostler and gotten her gun.

_God, God, no!_

Max didn't think, only threw herself at the man before he could get a firm grip on her firearm. Her hand lashed over his wrist and she dug her nails into his flesh, feeling his ropey veins and sweaty skin.

Burt howled.

"Dad!" a voice from nearby called. It was the teenager, Jensen. He raised his pistol at them.

"Wait, you'll shoot them both!" another voice called, one of the brothers-in-law.

"Stay back!" That was Jeep, still holding his position behind the truck.

And over the chaos, Max and Burt continued to grapple for the gun. Raising her foot, Max slammed her heel into the man's shin, causing him to reel wildly. Burt cursed her and shoved his elbow into her face, connecting with her left cheekbone. Max's mind went numb. She was stunned. Her grip loosened on the gun ever so slightly. But it was enough, enough for Burt to jam the barrel into her wrist and fire.

Blood. There was blood leaking down her arm, spurting from the hole in her wrist.

Max's mouth fell open, but she did not scream.

Jack did, though.

"Max!" he cried, hurling himself from the squad car towards his aunt.

And the boy Jensen, the teenager who couldn't have been more than seventeen, raised his gun and fired.

* * *

An unlikely sheen of sweat covered Gabriel's brow as he strapped on his pauldrons, the muscles around his shoulder wound knotting painfully as he reached to fasten the buckles. It was the first time he had donned his armor since the fateful night of his battle with Michael and instead of feeling some welcome relief, some stirring of the familiar as he adjusted the carefully crafted metal around his frame, the archangel instead experienced dread. Nothing but cold, hard terror.

The emotion tugged at his stomach, squirming around in his gut like a serpent. And even as his nimble fingers tightened the buckles and pulled at the leather straps, a grimace shriveled his lips.

The air still had the feel of the inevitable to it. And it was dreadful. Dark. A wicked promise that scowled upon him. It felt like a storm gathering on the horizon, the ominous, black clouds congregating together until they created one awful whole. Thunder would follow, along with spidery veins of lightening that would reach down to the earth. And then there would be a moment, a single, breathless moment before chaos reigned. Before the awesome and wretched power of the thing broke loose upon the world.

And he was powerless to stop it. Absolutely powerless.

Gabriel dropped his hands from the buckles, his knuckles cracking as he clenched and unclenched his fingers.

_I am weak,_ he thought. _I am weak._

In all his existence, Gabriel had never been so morbid. This worry was unusual, something that his battle-hardened and war-worn mind couldn't reconcile with his natural stoicism. But today his senses were attuned, his every nerve ending on fire, sharpened like the edge of keen blade. Something was coming. No…no, not coming.

It was already here.

Standing in the garage with the door opened and pulled back on it's tracks, Gabriel finished fastening his armor and looked out onto the desert. The sky was a weak blue, the clouds clinging to the distant mountains, unfurling in thin tendrils like reaching, pale fingers. _The hand of Death_, he mused and then banished the thought, shaking his head until it was empty, until the crystal clarity of it all cut through the gossamer web of uncertainty.

He was going mad. He was going to go mad if he didn't remember himself. Remember what he was. Remember what he had lost.

Max…

Gabriel spat out his breath, cleansing his lungs before he drew in more air. The old stale scent of horse, which had been absorbed into the house and paddocks and surrounding landscape, was brought to him on a mild breeze. The afternoon was swift approaching and the day had warmed some, the winter chill becoming tolerable. Glancing at the narrow ribbon of blacktop that threaded along the flatlands, the angel wondered just how far Max and Jack had gotten. And how, yes how, would he be able to find them?

Max had mentioned a powerhouse nearby, though Gabriel had no idea where the place might be, nor how far it actually was from the house. And yet, if he flew up just below the line of wispy clouds, he would undoubtedly be able to see a good stretch of the desert and something as obvious as a powerhouse would not evade him for long.

But then again, there was always the chance that Max and Jack hadn't gone to the powerhouse. As Gabriel lifted his mace, curling his fingers around the cold steel of the rounded shaft, a fresh fear assaulted him.

If Max and Jack hadn't gone to the powerhouse, then where had they run off to? Run, run. Yes, run. The word rattled around his already harried mind. Max could have very well run, run away from him. Because he had been foolish. Because he had been weak.

Because he had dared to love her.

_No, no. _

He drove the vile words from his head, loathing each misleading phrase, each false, tempting syllable. This was not a moment for doubt and judgment. His emotions were rootless. Easily dismissed. Not meant to be embraced. No, never embraced.

Gabriel knew that Max would not leave so hastily. The need for refuge and shelter, for protection for her young nephew, would far outweigh her upset. And as it was, Max wasn't the sort of woman who would withdraw without engaging first, without joining in battle to fight for what she believed was hers.

If anything, Gabriel imagined the woman asking _him_ to leave, to vacate her property or however she might put it her in police officer's jargon.

And would he depart if she asked him to? Gabriel knew he could not afford to ponder the question. It would lead him to no good, would cause him to reconsider his already uncertain beliefs. After all, there was something rather comforting in confusion. He could lose himself in it, could avoid what needed to be avoided, could close up his heart until he knew nothing, until he felt nothing but the weight of his pauldrons on his shoulders and the cold shaft of his mace in his hand.

That was all that matter. That was all that could ever matter to him.

_Max…._

With more difficulty than he cared to admit, Gabriel grounded his thoughts, turning his mind to the practical. His immediate concern must be answered first. He would locate Max and Jack and see them back to safety…no matter what came afterwards, whatever the dreadful inevitable was….

The inevitable. The inevitable.

Gabriel swallowed the uncomfortable bubble of nausea that rose in his throat. _Never mind_, he told himself. _Never mind it now._

Moving out of the garage and into the somewhat temperate air, he allowed his wings to stretch, the long, steely feathers quivering as he strengthened them, preparing to take flight. A much needed wave of adrenalin rushed to his limbs, flooding his body with a pleasant, inviting warmth that steadied his otherwise flagging morale.

The impossible suddenly became surmountable. And the inevitable, perhaps, was not so threatening anymore.

Gabriel took one step forward, bracing his legs, hunching his shoulders as he moved to launch himself into the sky. But then he stopped. Then he stood quite still. Then his heart, which had pulsed in an even, steady rhythm, skipped a beat or two.

There was someone on the road, some vehicle racing along that ribbon of blacktop in the distance.

Gabriel felt his fingers loosen around his mace as he caught sight of the color of the car…no, truck. It was a rusty red pick-up, a battered old thing with dust billowing around its worn tires and screeching wheels.

He had seen the truck before. Charlie and Jeep had driven it up to the house only four days ago.

And they had come back now.

Why?

The skin underneath Gabriel's collar prickled, reacting to the cold touch of the iron. He watched as the pick-up took the turn from the road to the driveway hard, the mass of metal jolting as it nearly skidded off onto the shoulder. Squinting, he made out three people in the cab. Jeep was driving, Charlie was sitting in the passenger's seat and huddled between them was an indistinct figure, a shadowy shape with a bowed head.

But then Gabriel caught sight of a flash of crimson. Someone in that cab was bleeding, he realized. Bleeding badly.

_Oh God, dear Father, I should never have let them go alone._

The truck barreled up the dirt driveway, Jeep slamming on the brakes just outside the garage, throwing the vehicle into park. The noxious smell of burning rubber rose into the air, all fire and brimstone and sulfur.

Gabriel did not move, but let the dust settle around him in a cloudy halo of parched earth and sand. He saw Jeep climb out of the cab, saw the man lift something to the ground.

And there was blood….

"Hey!" Jeep cried, his animosity towards the angel dissipating in the rush of the rising crisis. "You gotta help me or she's gonna bleed to death!"

Gabriel was jolted out of his apathy, the word _she_ sending a horrible warning through his brain.

_She. She._

He rounded the truck and saw her lying there.

It was Max, of course. Who else would it have been? The front of her policewoman's shirt was stained a darker black with blood and Jeep was holding her right arm over her head. A bullet had lodged itself in her wrist and there was a narrow gash above her left temple, a little ravine that dribbled red down her forehead. Her bangs were matted with sand and sweat.

"How did this-" Gabriel began, but then he heard Charlie, sobbing hysterically as she climbed out of the other side of cab, her baby still in her arms.

Charlie, the baby, Jeep, Max. They were all accounted for, all accounted for except….

"Where's Jack?" Gabriel demanded.

Charlie wept. Jeep looked up at the angel quickly, his eyes empty.

"She's gonna bleed to death," the young man mumbled. "She's gonna…we need help."

But Gabriel didn't hear him, didn't hear him because he was praying.

_Dear Father_, he begged, pleaded, _Our Father, Who art in Heaven…._

Somehow, he forced his legs to move, bringing him to the back of the truck where he saw something in the bed, something wrapped in the crocheted afghan that Max had given to Charlie as a baby blanket some days ago.

"Don't look," Charlie cried, her voice a painful bleat. "Please don't look."

But Gabriel knew he had to. Lifting the edge of the blanket, he saw Jack. The boy had a bullet through his head. He was dead.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Do you hate me now? I'm sorry, but it had to happen. I have to admit, since the day I started writing this fic back in January (wow, has it been that long?) I knew Jack would die. As Gabriel surmised, it was the inevitable.

Thanks so much for reading! I do feel bad for leaving you guys with such a downer chapter. To be honest, the next few chapters won't exactly be a walk in the park either.

Anyway, if your American like me, enjoy your Memorial Day! If not, I hope you have a fabulous weekend. As usual, the next installment should be posted in ten days. Take care!


	16. Chapter Sixteen Blood and Water

**Author's Note: **Hmm, I wish I could say this chapter is more cheerful than the last one, but then I'd be lying. However, I do promise that things _will_ get better for Gabriel and Max…eventually.

As always, I'd like to thank all my wonderful readers for sticking with this story for so long and my fantastic reviewers, **saichick, DarkLadyAthara, Fyrefly, moondawntreader, little biscuit, Yes-Man, Lexicon,** **ita-chan01 **and **ArmoredSoul. **Also, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you all so much! I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Sixteen Blood and Water**

He found them. He found them and he killed them all.

By the time Gabriel came upon them and saw them scrambling for cover in the scant undergrowth of the desert, there were only three left. Two men with guns. The third was a boy who could have been no more than seventeen. He was unarmed.

But that did not matter. He found them and he killed them all.

It had been Jeep who told Gabriel what he needed to know, spilling the wretched details of the encounter in a rush of brutal, breathless narrative. There had been four men at first. Four men who had waylaid Max and Jack and attacked them on a lonely stretch of highway.

"I killed one," Jeep had said even as he helped the angel carry Max into the garage, even as he settled her on the cement floor, where she bled and bled and bled. "I killed the one that shot Officer Quinn. Put a bullet through his throat…but I couldn't get to the rest. They all ran off into the desert after…after…" He trailed off helplessly, finishing with, "It was the youngest one who fired the fatal shot, the youngest one who…."

But Gabriel knew. _Killed Jack_, his mind supplied. _Murdered him._

It was enough. Enough to send him barreling through the sky, his wings shredding the clouds as he searched the desert. He followed the road for the most part, coming to the place where it all had happened, where the highway was blockaded by a flat-bed truck and long coils of barbed wire.

Max's squad car had been abandoned and in the shadow of it rested the corpse of the fourth man, the one whom Jeep had killed. He was lying spread-eagled with his hat still on his head. Gabriel circled him like a vulture for a moment and then wheeled to the right. It did not take him long to find the others, the two men and the boy. And they were tiny little specks. Marks of ugly black against the golden-hued sand.

He saw them first, but they only saw _him_ when it was too late.

Gabriel overtook them, landing in a spray of dust and dirt, his mace raised, the blades opening with a fatal ring. The first one, a bearded man with blood-streaked eyes, didn't even have time to shoulder his shotgun. Gabriel swung his mace. There was the crunch of bone and a horrible, resounding crack. A head rolled.

"Fuck!" the second man heaved his gun into the air and fired wildly. The shot went wide, arcing past Gabriel's left bicep. The man knew then. He knew the end had come.

"Jensen, run!," he screamed.

Gabriel lifted up his mace and struck, crushing the man's shoulder. The spikes tore through an artery. He did not die right away, but languished in the stony sand as his life ebbed.

One remained. A boy. He took off into the wild, his legs churning furiously as he raced over the terrain, down into a low ditch, up towards a hill.

Gabriel followed him, flew over the him until he was close enough to knock him off his feet with one powerful kick. The sole of his boot landed square in the boy's back, breaking vertebrae. He tumbled to the ground like a flailing marionette. Like a puppet tangled in its own strings.

"Please!" he begged even as he fell. "Please! Please don't!"

Gabriel crashed to the desert floor besides him. He did not break stride.

"Please!" the boy screamed until his voice was raw and broken. "Please!"

Gabriel did not listen. He brought his mace down. And then all was quiet. And then all was still.

It was over. It was finished.

* * *

Some time later he returned to the house, landing in the driveway in a great rush of air, his boots hitting the gravel hard. He stood there for a moment and breathed. And when the moment past, Gabriel opened his fingers and dropped his mace, letting the weapon lie in the dust where it belonged, with the dead and the damned.

The dead. So many dead….

He was tired. Tired, tired, tired. The exhaustion fed on his heartsickness, grew in the heat of it, smoldered and burned like a tropical fever. It took the chill of dread from his bones and replaced it with a sticky, slick warmth. A noxious, dark, hell-sent heat.

Gabriel felt sweat gather underneath his arms and in the tender places behind his knees, where his breeches clung to his skin. He blinked his eyes, once, twice, feeling a veritable delirium, a hazy, wild sort of madness descend and draw away all that was left of him…the very little that he could still claim as his own.

Jack was dead. Dead.

And Max…

Worse than dead, maybe.

Gabriel lifted his lowered head and straightened his bowed shoulders. The garage door had been left open and someone, maybe Jeep, had pulled the pick-up into the narrow space next to the abandoned power tools and the broken lawn mower. Wearily, he trudged up the driveway, squeezing passed the truck, his wings scraping the metal and chipping off the paint even though he tried to be careful. Jack-or his body, at least-was no longer lying in the back, although a tell-tale dark stain had seeped into the ridged bottom of the bed.

And for an instant, the heat and sickness left Gabriel and his heart clenched and he felt the great, terrible weight of it all fall on him. Fall. Fall.

Jack…just a little boy…just an innocent child….

_Father, why? Why?_

A noise in the kitchen brought him back from the edge. It was the sound of water. Water running. Water gushing.

Gabriel stepped inside the house and saw Charlie. The woman, the mother of the new savior, was acting the part of the waitress again, standing by the sink as she rinsed out a wooden salad bowl. An empty drawer had been pulled out of the kitchen counter and placed on the table, where it was transformed into an unlikely cradle. The sleeping infant lay within, wrapped up in a towel instead of the crocheted afghan.

It was Jack, Gabriel realized, who slept swaddled in that afghan now.

He stood there for what might have been a long time. Or perhaps it was only an instant, a flash in the pan moment that drifted by him in the space of a breath and the blink of an eye.

Charlie finished washing out the salad bowl and laid it in the drain. She turned around, wiping her hands on her jeans and when she saw him, her pretty blue eyes went round with fear.

And Gabriel wanted to say something to her, but he didn't know exactly what it was.

"Michael!" Charlie's voice was shrill with fear. "Michael! Michael! Michael!" She called the name over and over again, blurring the syllables together until it sounded only like nervous gibberish. And all the while she was moving, coming to stand between the angel and her tiny, sleeping baby. "Michael!"

A door opened and then closed. Quick footsteps sounded in the narrow hall. His brother was suddenly before him, looking too much like a doctor as he scrubbed his hands on a damp towel. There were traces of blood on his knuckles.

Michael's eyes went wide when he saw Gabriel. He laid the towel, which was embellished with a faint, flowery pattern, on the back of a kitchen chair. "Brother," he said in a slow, ponderous voice, "there is blood-"

"On your hands," Gabriel interrupted him.

Michael looked down at his fingers in surprise. "Yes," he said, "but-"

"Max," Gabriel replied, the name heavy in his throat, lingering on his tongue. It was something foul now, something he did not wish to say but knew he had to. "I must see her."

Michael raised one hand and Gabriel recognized the pacifying gesture. He bristled in annoyance.

"You will," his brother answered. "But not now."

Gabriel swallowed. "She is dead, then?"

Again, Michael's eyes went wide. "No, no. She lives. She will recover."

_Impossible, _Gabriel thought, but kept it to himself.

"Her wounds?" he asked, clearing the grit and sand from his throat with a tight cough.

"Grave," Michael said. "But not fatal." His eyes were still wide and Gabriel could not recognize the emotion that glittered within, that shone like an all too bright beacon in his soul.

And then he realized. Fear, it was fear. Not a deep fear. Not a sign of blatant terror, but something subtle. Guarded. Cautious.

Gabriel stared at the stained towel that hung limply on the chair, hating its pink little flowers and green leaves and superficial beauty. "Max," he said slowly, "would perhaps be better off dead."

Charlie made a sound, a quiet, indistinct noise. Out of the corner of his eye, Gabriel saw her fluttering about, her face still tear-stained and tear-streaked, her hands trembling with uncertainty as she fussed over her sleeping baby and mourned the death of another child she didn't even know.

_Jack. Jack._

Michael's lips parted slightly. "Gabriel," he said.

"You came too late."

"Brother-"

"As did I." Gabriel lowered his eyes and looked at the floor, at the sticky, unswept linoleum. It had only been a few hours ago that Jack had spotted a puddle by the refrigerator and Max had wanted to go to the powerhouse. _And I should have gone with them, _he thought. _I should have never let them go alone…._

Michael seemed at a loss, unusual confusion causing the corners of his mouth to fold in a worried frown. "You wish to see her?" he asked, his voice betraying indecision, as if the question were posed to himself and not to Gabriel. "You wish to see her? Then come. She is in the back bedroom. Sleeping. Walk quietly."

Charlie stepped forward nervously. "Michael!"

"Do not worry." Another raised hand. Another attempt at pacification. "I will tend to it. Let him see her first."

And Gabriel hated the way they spoke, the way they talked right past him, as if he were blind and deaf and dumb. As if he were mad.

"Come." Michael beckoned to him.

Gabriel followed his brother down the hall, a heavy stone settling in his chest, thudding against his ribcage as he walked and moved and breathed. Some anger was nestling there, right up against his heart. Some unspoken and unspent rage.

The hall was tight and Gabriel moved slowly, pausing only briefly when he passed the door to Jack's room. He thought of the boy standing there, sleep in his eyes, his brown hair tousled.

Pain. _God, dear Father, the pain_. It rose up in his gorge, threatening to overcome him in a swell of nausea and heartsickness and fever. Gabriel put his hand to his brow and pressed the spot between his eyes. As his fingers touched his skin, he realized they were damp. Slick with sweat, he assumed and trudged after Michael.

The back of the house, where Max slept and where the bathroom was located, was mostly a mystery to him. During his stay with the humans, Gabriel had confined himself to the living room, kitchen and garage, giving Max and Jack their privacy when they needed it. Walking so boldly into Max's bedroom now, while she slumbered, seemed like a violation of some kind, and Gabriel began to wonder if he really needed to see her, if he should see her at all.

It might be unbearable. It might be unbearable for him to look at her again.

Michael reached the half-closed door to her bedroom and pushed it open gently, his hand sliding along the whitewashed wood that was now yellowed with age and grime. Gabriel reluctantly stepped inside behind his brother, feeling the stone in his chest settle somewhere in his stomach. His throat tightened. He nearly gagged.

The space was less of a bedroom now and more of a make-shift triage, having that dreadful, stuffy sick-room feel to it. The strong, tawny light of the sunset came in through the single window. Jeep sat in a chair by the dresser, his hands on his knees, his eyes staring ahead. There was a small vanity in the corner by the door, and instead of finding various cosmetics and tiny bottles of perfume atop it, Gabriel saw the scattered debris of his brother's doctoring. Gauze. A scissor. The odds and ends of some sutures. Small, square packets of alcohol pads. And a pair of needle-nosed pliers, the tips bloodied. He looked to the side and noticed a trash cash by the bed. Max's old police shirt lay within, ripped down the middle and riddled with dark splotches of gore.

Again, the nausea rose within him. He clamped his jaw, grinding his teeth together as he struggled to swallow it back.

Breathe. He needed to breathe. Deeply. Breathe deeply.

After much avoidance on his part, Gabriel finally looked at Max. She was lying on the bed in her undershirt. A blanket was thrown over her legs and, much to his consternation, she appeared to be unconscious as opposed to "sleeping". Gabriel did feel some relief, although, when he saw her chest rise and fall easily. Rise and fall.

Breathe. Breathe deeply.

"See the stitching," Michael said, pointing out his handiwork.

Black sutures neatly criss-crossed the gash on Max's brow, though the wound was now swollen and grotesque looking. Gabriel saw the bandage around her right wrist, her arm hanging in a sling that rested around her neck. There was a little swatch of crimson on the white gauze around her bullet wound, where she had already bled through.

"Did you stitch that as well?" he asked.

"Yes." Michael placed his hands on his hips. "She has already begun to clot, which is a promising sign. I do not think the bone is broken, but the bullet likely ricocheted and caused some internal damage. There was no exit wound. I pulled this out with the pliers." He reached over for something on the bedside table and held it up for Gabriel to see.

The misshapen bullet caught the light, red mixing with the silver.

Gabriel's nostrils dilated. He thought he smelled gunpowder.

"Unfortunately, we were lacking in anesthesia," Michael continued.

"Yeah," Jeep muttered weakly. "That part wasn't so easy."

"But I am more concerned about the risk of infection," Michael said, overriding Jeep. "Gangrene is an unfortunate possibility. And amputation…" he trailed off.

Silence. Jeep folded his elbows over his knees, his head resting in his palms. Michael looked askance, the corners of his mouth still drooping. He picked up a few of the empty packets of alcohol pads and swept them into the trash can.

Gabriel stared at Max. She was pale, her skin pasty with sweat and maybe tears. Suddenly, he felt his own eyes sting.

He wondered if she knew, if she realized….

For a moment, he envied the sweet oblivion of sleep, the fog of unconsciousness. It was a reprieve. A respite. And he almost wished he could lay down, lay down his weary body and let it all wash away.

He shouldn't care for these humans, for these wretched, miserable, sinful little creatures. They were horrible. They were revolting. And yet here he was, reaching out to touch Max, his hand inching towards her, closer, closer…just to touch her again.

Instinctively, Michael started forward. "Brother," he warned.

But Gabriel didn't listen. His fingers lit upon Max's neck, right above her jugular. He felt the tiny bumps on her skin, felt the great rush of her blood and the pulse of her heart, beating out a fierce, primitive cadence, but beating nonetheless. He wondered what would happen if it stopped right now. What he would do. What would become of him.

What would become of her.

_Life. _The word burned in him, rose with the heat of his heartsickness. These little humans had taken the Father's greatest gift for granted…and so had he.

_Forgive me, Lord. Forgive me. _

The moment passed. Gabriel felt his vision focus, felt something of reality return to him. He stared at the fingers he had pressed to Max's neck, and saw that they were wet, noticed that they had left faint marks of moisture on her skin.

Gabriel shook his head and glanced about. And then he caught sight of himself in the broad mirror that hung over the dresser. Blood. On his face. On his hands. On his armor. He was covered in blood.

Which was why Charlie had panicked when she saw him standing behind her in the kitchen. Which was why Michael's eyes had glinted with caution when he first beheld Gabriel.

_Brother_, he had said._ There is blood._

Gabriel stepped away from Max, suddenly disgusted with himself. Michael touched his elbow, a look of sympathy carved into his deepening frown.

"Come away," he said softly. "You must wash."

He pulled Gabriel into the hall, pausing for a moment to address Jeep. "Watch for signs of shock," Michael instructed. "Let me know if her breathing becomes shallow."

"All right," Jeep replied hesitantly even as Michael shut the door on him.

The brothers moved down the hall together, slipping into the bathroom that was almost too small to accommodate them both. Gabriel lingered by the sink while Michael approached the shower, pulling back the mildewed curtain as he reached to turn on the faucets.

"I do not think you will fit," he said at length, observing the curtain rods and the narrow tub. With a twist of his wrist, Michael turned the cold water knob on all the way and the showerhead hissed, spraying a steady mist.

"No matter," Gabriel said lifelessly. He removed his armor piece by piece, dropping his vambraces and pauldrons into the sink, letting his breastplate and greaves rest on the bathroom mat that sat in front of the toilet. His tunic came off last, falling to the floor with a sickeningly wet plop. Spots of red were smeared in the grout between the tiles.

Michael stepped back and let him reach the shower, although Gabriel soon realized his brother was right. He wouldn't be able to fit in the tiny tub. Instead, he leaned forward into the spray, keeping his wings folded as close to his body as he could. The water was icy when it hit him. The shock of it stole the air from his lungs and left him breathless.

Gabriel washed as best he could, cleaning his arms and torso before turning around to let the water rush off his wings. It was difficult maneuvering with the curtain rod so low, but he finally managed to position himself close enough so that the water pinged off his razor feathers. A chill crept along his spine, making him shiver and yet his mind was still burning. Fever. The fever of heartsickness would not abate.

After a moment, after he had stayed in the shower for as long as he could bear it, until his wings and shoulders were numb, he pulled away from the cold stream, twisting the knob as he had seen Michael do to turn off the water.

His brother was standing nearby, a towel in his hands. He gave it to Gabriel.

"You killed them?" he asked.

Gabriel brought the towel to his face and held it there for a moment. It smelled dank, damp. "Even the boy," he replied, his words muffled against the cloth. "Jeep told me that he was…that the boy fired the shot."

He scrubbed his face dry, then lowered the towel so that he could brush the water from his chest. Michael stared at him and he was relieved to see that there was no judgment in his brother's eyes. Only sympathy. Pity.

Once, not so long ago, he would have hated Michael's pity, would have fought against it. Pity, after all, meant that he was pitiful. That he was weak. _Weak_.

But now he found the sympathy comforting. Calming. Consoling. Gabriel leaned against the side off the tub and dried his arms. Behind him, blood mixed with water as it swirled down the rusty drain.

Michael observed him carefully. "Jack," he said.

Gabriel started at the name, the knot in his stomach coiling tighter. _Don't_, he wanted to say, to beg. _Please don't._

Michael met his gaze and held it. "I thought you should know," he said, "that the child is at peace. I saw his soul to Paradise myself. He is with his mother."

"Where a child should be," Gabriel replied. He dropped the towel on the floor, bracing his arms on either side of him. "But Max was his mother as well. Like a mother, at least."

"Yes, Max." Michael pressed his hip against the sink, reaching to pick up one of Gabriel's vambraces. Turning on the water, he began to wash the filth from the leather, his fingers moving methodically, though Gabriel noticed that they trembled. "This is a tragedy for her." He paused and glanced at his brother. "And for you."

The stone in his heart had worked its way to Gabriel's throat now. He tried to swallow it, but could not. And then the tears came. "I loved that child," he said.

Michael dropped the vambrace into the sink and in one stride, had closed the gap between them.

"I know," he said, as Gabriel wept against his shoulder, all shame, all restraint, all fear gone. "And he was happy for your love. He told me so, brother."

"Do not say such things," Gabriel managed through his hateful tears. "They wound me."

"They should bring you comfort," Michael insisted.

"Nothing will." Gabriel took a shuddering breath and gently pushed his brother away.

Michael withdrew, folding his arms over his middle, his expression softened, thoughtful. "Max?" he asked.

Gabriel wasn't certain what he meant. His mind was overwhelmed. Again, he pressed his fingers to the space between his eyes. Pain bloomed there. A throbbing ache. He shut his eyes. "Max," he repeated.

"Brother." Michael hovered nearby. Gabriel could feel his presence, hear the shuffle of his booted feet on the bathroom mat. "I must ask you…."

Gabriel rubbed his brow, feeling the pain travel, extend down his arms in the form of a vicious ache. Even when he closed his eyes, he still saw Jack, lying in the bed of Jeep's truck. If only he had gone with them. If only…if only…

Who was to blame?

"Tell me," Michael said and there was an unlikely note of frustration in his voice, some sudden surge of desperation. "You have come to love her as well."

_Love? _Gabriel knew he hated the word, knew that it had caused him to be fearful, had caused him to neglect what he should not have neglected. But this feeling, this endless, deep pain, this heat of heartsickness, could not be love.

Gabriel forced his eyes open and saw Michael standing before him, lips pressed in a firm line, his brow heavily creased.

"I…I do not know. I do not know what you are asking me," he replied, the words rushing from him on the edge of a sigh.

Michael said nothing, although Gabriel felt that his brother was quietly urging him to continue, to press on and divulge some secret, the likes of which he had guarded jealously for quite some time.

He had felt very much the same way when they last stood together in the mountain vale, but Gabriel was no more eager to reveal the inner workings of his mind to his brother now than he had been before.

Instead, he offered him a wary silence. A paranoid quiet. Suspicion came to life within him, fueling his uneasiness. Sitting there on the edge off the tub under Michael's keen stare, he felt inexorably vulnerable, like a wounded creature waiting to be picked off by some bird of prey. And Michael was circling him now, taking his time, judging, waiting for the right moment to strike.

Gabriel's nostrils flared, the heat of his heartsickness rising and turning to anger. To rage.

"I have nothing more to say to you," he said, his voice taking on a steely note of distance, of detachment.

Michael looked disappointed, but he remained composed. "I understand," he replied. Turning, he resumed the work of cleaning Gabriel's armor. Water gushed from the tiny faucet, sputtering weakly as it ran through the rattling pipes.

Gabriel was uncomfortable. His unspent anger was still sitting stagnant in his veins. For lack of anything better to do, he picked up his abandoned towel and folded it neatly, setting it on the back of the toilet.

His brother's silence was no longer companionable, but irritating. Gabriel almost wished he would speak, wished he would say something, whether foul or fair, to break the tension between them. Had it not been a few minutes ago that he had wept freely in Michael's arms? No, it seemed impossible.

He was furious with his brother now, lost to some unstable delirium, the same he had felt while swooping down on those men in the desert, the same madness that had overtaken him when he killed that boy, that boy who had begged for his life.

Had Jack begged for his life as well? he wondered. Or had his death been too sudden? A moment of awareness passing into oblivion. A sudden shadow stealing away the sun. Everything falling to black. Falling to black.

His cheeks were sticky, he realized. Wet. He was crying again.

Michael glanced at him. "My poor brother," he said, resting one of Gabriel's pauldrons on the rim of the sink as he stepped towards him. "My poor brother." He reached out a hand.

But Gabriel stood, thrusting himself to his feet so suddenly that his wings hit the shower curtain and sent the rod tumbling back into the tub. It landed with a clatter, the little metal rings tinkling like silver bells against the porcelain.

_Every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings_, he thought. A human had said that once. It was a pretty fairy tale. Something soft and comforting. Something meant to drive away the dark. _The dark_.

"I will have none of your sympathy," he told Michael, his fresh hostility spurring him onward, to dizzying, maddening heights where the air was thin and he could scarcely breathe.

Michael drew back as if stung. "Gabriel?"

"How did you know? How did you know to come here? Were you watching? Did you see all this happen?" He could withhold his accusations no longer. Speaking them gave them power. Made them real. So _devastatingly_ real.

Michael placed a hand on his chest, his long fingers trembling in earnest now, his eyes gleaming. "I told you," he said slowly, shakily. "I told you, Gabriel. The boy's soul came to me. I knew when I saw him, when I brought him to Paradise. I knew then."

"You knew because you were watching the boy," Gabriel retorted, his voice raised and getting louder. "And you were watching the boy because he was a prophet. Do not take me for a fool, Michael! I know as much. You told me so while we stood in the mountain vale together."

"No!" And now Michael lunged forward, his eyes wide again. Wide and burning. "Gabriel, you are wrong!"

"Do not deceive me." Gabriel side-stepped him, pushing himself back up against the wall where his wings caused wire-thin cracks to form in the cheap plaster. "You only shepherded Jeep and Charlie to this place because of Jack…because the poor child was one of your prophets!"

"No!" Michael insisted. He had cornered Gabriel now, was blocking his path to the door, his lithe frame shaken with wild urgency. "Not Jack, Gabriel. It was never Jack. It is Max."

Gabriel froze. What was left of his world collapsed. Collapsed and shattered. It did not make sense. It could not make sense.

God, Father, it made complete, awful, undeniable sense.

And yet, he was belligerent. "I do not believe you," he said.

Michael was still standing in the doorway, one of his hands braced on the opposite wall, the angelic script trailing down his wrist like a black vine.

Gabriel snarled and turned away from him.

"I never kept the truth from you," Michael insisted. "I wasn't entirely certain myself for some time."

"I do not believe you," Gabriel repeated. He was confined to the tiny space of the bathroom, a caged animal. A threatened beast. He could not be here, he could not be here now.

Not with Jack lying dead. And Max. Perhaps she should have died too.

A thought struck him then, a notion that was more dangerous than any of his previous assumptions. He almost feared to speak it for what it would bring. But oh, if it was true. If it could possibly be true….

"You are to blame," he said, his fingers uncurling, unclenching, his whole body seeming to sag under the devastation, under the tragedy of it all. "It was your influence. You wished for Jack's death. For you knew, Michael, you knew that without the boy Max would be nothing. And you could use the nothingness, you could shape it into whatever empty vessel you pleased, whatever blind, raving prophet. My God! My God! I am sick!"

"Gabriel!" Michael's whole body jerked forward in protest, his arms outstretched towards his brother. And his eyes were wide now, yes wide with fear, wide with tears. They spilled down his thin cheeks in a torrent so that Gabriel was ashamed of his unfettered emotion.

But still, he pulled away from the smaller angel, removed himself from the reach of his grasping hands. "I am _sick!_" Gabriel cried and his voice echoed in the tiny bathroom, and it was the voice of the holy herald, he who blew the final trumpet on the day of doom.

"No!" Michael cried, the color draining from his face until his skin looked livid and pale. "Please, brother. No!"

But Gabriel had his answer, the answer that would satisfy his heartsickness, that would feed his fever and ranting delirium. Michael had removed his arm from the door. He was no longer blocking the way to the hall. Gabriel saw his opportunity.

He bolted, driving into Michael's left flank with crushing force. His brother gasped and stumbled, unable to brace himself as he fell, caught between the toilet and the sink. One of his wingtips knocked a medicine cabinet off the wall.

But Gabriel did not look back. He barreled down the hall and into the sick-room where Max still lay. Jeep half-rose when he saw him, his expression terrified.

"What-what-" he stuttered.

Gabriel reached forward and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, thrusting him from the room with one great sweep of his arm. Jeep tumbled, unharmed, just outside the door. Raising his other arm, Gabriel slammed the door closed. It had no lock, he realized, but that didn't matter.

Feverish energy still blazing within him, he took the dresser and lifted it in front of the door. And then he stood back, panting.

There was silence for a moment.

Gabriel turned and glanced over his shoulder. Max was still resting on the bed, unconscious as opposed to sleeping, mercifully unaware of the chaos around her.

Max. Max.

_Who was to blame? _he thought wildly. _Who was to blame?_

A frantic rattling noise stole his attention. Someone was pounding on the barricaded door, twisting the knob uselessly.

"Gabriel! Gabriel!" Michael chorused over and over again. He was beating his hand, open-palmed, on the old white-washed wood.

Gabriel sank weak-kneed onto the edge of the bed, careful not to disturb Max. And as he turned his gaze to the door, he saw his image reflected in the dresser mirror once more. It quivered now. It trembled and shook every time Michael drove his weight against the door.

"Who is to blame?" he asked Max. "Who is to blame?"

She didn't answer.

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you have the time, please leave a review. Feedback always makes me unbelievably happy.

In chapter seventeen, Gabriel finally comes to terms with his feelings for Max. The humans and angels hold a funeral for Jack, while Michael tries, once more, to reach out to his brother. As usual, my next update should be in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!


	17. Chapter Seventeen Vigil

**Author's Note: **Oh my goodness, this chapter was tricky to write. Initially, I had anticipated this installment being slightly shorter than the others and somewhat abrupt in tone, but as always, this story seems to have a mind of its own. Gabriel's inner turmoil really comes to a boiling point in this chapter, and unfortunately, his thought process isn't exactly coherent. Anyhow, at the very least, I do promise an abundance of angel angst. ^_^

And, of course, I have to thank all my wonderful/amazing/fantastic/unbelievably supportive readers and reviewers, **WithLoveFromTorchwood, saichick, Yes-Man, Lexicon, dark's silver shadow, ita-chan01, Fyrefly, Shin **and **dayzejane**. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts lists. I hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Seventeen Vigil**

Michael did not break down the bedroom door. He could have, but he did not. Instead, Gabriel listened as his pleas bled through the thin wood, his voice eventually becoming cracked and weak as he cajoled, and begged, and occasionally, offered up threats to convince his brother to emerge.

"Gabriel, do not seek solitude in this bleak hour. Come to me and do not shield yourself in unnatural darkness."

"Speak with me for only a moment, brother. Please, give me but a moment. Just one moment, Gabriel."

"I must come inside. Brother, you must recognize…Max…her wounds. She could be turning septic even now. Listen to me, Gabriel!"

But Gabriel did not listen. He ignored Michael. Ignored the faint, scratching sound of his rough-skinned palms on the wood. Ignored the harried pitch of his voice and the pathetic sob-laced sighs.

Gabriel ignored his brother. Turned a blind eye and a deaf ear. Drained what affection remained in his heart and replaced it with distrust, with misguided blame.

Blame. Who was to blame?

_I am. _

The thought shot through his mind like a vein of lightning, a sudden flash of devastating clarity that disappeared into the murky, unreliable gloom. _I am to blame, I am…_

No. Impossible.

He wasn't to blame. He had not been there on that bleak stretch of desert highway. He had not been there when the men overwhelmed Max and dragged her out of the squad car. He had not been there when the gun went off and Jack, who had only been trying to help his aunt, got in the way. He had been…

"Too late," Gabriel uttered the reprimanding words, felt them scorch his throat, blaze with the fire that was already consuming him, that was making him sick and wild and mad.

Mad. Mad. Rage. Revenge. The men first. The boy who was unarmed. And now Michael. Because it was Michael who had…it was Michael who…who…

Gabriel's lips drew back over his teeth. He wanted to say it. Wanted to purge his suspicions. Give voice to his doubt.

And oh, he had doubts…such doubts.*

Gabriel rose from the bed and the springs creaked and Max stirred, pearls of sweat beading her brow even though the room was cold. _Infection_, he worried, taking in her ashen countenance and the dry skin that scabbed her lips. If she developed an infection, then _he_ would be to blame.

But now, yes now, Michael was to blame. Because it was Michael who had disobeyed. Because it was Michael who had used Max. Because it was Michael who had been wrong.

Wrong. Gabriel wanted his brother to be wrong. Undeniably guilty. Guilty as Adam and Eve had been guilty, with the juice of the apple smearing their lips. Guilty as all sinful humans were. Guilty…as Gabriel himself now felt.

_I should have never let them go alone._

His body tensed, the tips of his feathers quivering as he once more caught sight of himself in the mirror above the dresser. He was menacing. He was wounded. He was lost to the pain of what he had done and the one thing he had failed to do.

_I should have never let them go alone._

But Michael, there was still Michael. And Michael could be blamed as well, because it was easier that way. Convenient to direct what remained of his rage and grief at Michael, who had somehow become the enemy. The hated and reviled foe. The betrayer.

Gabriel's fingers worked themselves into fists, the knuckles bulging.

Michael, he must have, he must have…

…killed Jack?

The thought struck him as odd, as an incomplete and unsettled fallacy. Did he really believe that his brother had orchestrated the whole affair?

Maybe.

Had he somehow caused the electricity in the house to fail?

It was a possibility.

Had he forced Max to search for the powerhouse?

Perhaps.

Had he stood by as that seventeen-year-old boy pulled the trigger and fired the round that would lodge itself into Jack's brain?

No.

Had Michael, who loved these little humans, become a murdered of children?

_Oh God. Father. _

Gabriel almost felt ashamed of himself, although the emotion was hard to pin down. His regret was fluid, a ghost that flitted through his mind and fed greedily on his shame. And he was ashamed. Ashamed for having allowed Max and Jack to wander so easily into peril. Ashamed for hating his brother with no definite cause. Ashamed for what he felt then, standing in the bedroom with the blockaded door and Max, lying on the bed. Just her. Just him. Alone. Alone with the world turned against them. And it almost felt like a blessing. Almost.

But not quite.

Gabriel paced, his body trapped, confined in the small space between the bed and the dresser. Looking up, recognized his reflection in the mirror again and he hated what he saw. A prowling beast. A primitive animal. A thing of snarling, foam-flecked jaws and raised hackles and eyes that were hurt and scared and deadly.

_Death_, he thought. _I am Death. _

Ducking his head, he braced his arms against the dresser, pushing against the cheap wood until the top drawer began to splinter. His mind was besieged, the memories coming in quick flashes, the sensations creeping through his veins until his skin crawled and he felt his spirit struggle to break free from tormented flesh.

He thought of Jack, wrapped up in that crocheted afghan, a child, a life, reduced to a blood-stain in the bed of a pick-up truck. He thought of Michael, standing in the bathroom, holding Gabriel as he wept. Comforting him. And the things he had said. Many things.

_You have come to love her as well._

It almost felt like a blessing.

Without meaning to, Gabriel pushed his arms forward, the wood snapping in his hands like kindling, like brittle bones. His eyes widened when he realized what he had done and he stepped away from the dresser and its shattered top drawer and the scattering of sawdust.

Michael, what he had said, what he had…

"You have come to love her as well," Gabriel repeated, but his words were only an echo, a ripple that ran against the stillness.

Quiet. It was quiet now, he realized. He could hear his heart thundering in his ears and Michael…Michael had stopped pounding on the door.

Gabriel wondered if he had left. Or perhaps he was still there, sitting in that narrow hall, waiting, waiting to be forgiven although he was sinless.

Because he had not killed Jack, had he?

No. Maybe not.

But Gabriel was too proud to admit how wrong he might be about his brother. It was his flaw, his harmatia and pride always came before a fall. But that didn't matter. He had already fallen, already tumbled into the welcoming abyss. It did not matter. It did not matter. For there was no reason in this. No sense in the senseless.

He turned from the door.

The silence was deceptive, an eerie, beguiling calm that one might expect to find over a graveyard or the site of some wretched tragedy. And this was a tragedy, Gabriel supposed, an event that could be defined only by the grief that followed, by the wild outpouring of emotion that even now flowed from him. The stream was unchecked, the tide rising. Gabriel stood in the middle of the cold bedroom, the moonlight glancing off his scarred torso and bruised, burned shoulder. His soul weakened and wavered under the weight of what he had lost.

But what he had lost could not compare to what Max would yet lose. Watching her sleep, watching her drift in unseeing, unhearing, unfeeling oblivion convinced him that she could not yet know. Her dreams remained free, her heart unfettered by the specter of death, the death of a boy she had considered her own.

And no parent, Gabriel knew, should have to bury a child.

It was an aberration. A sin against nature, but it had happened. Max had been powerless to stop it. He had been powerless to stop it. The figure of blame alluded them both.

But in that moment, in the hard, black hour, Gabriel wished he had someone to blame, even his own brother. Even Michael.

It would be easier that way, after all. So much easier.

Slowly, as the night crept on and the moon hid itself behind silver-blue clouds and the stars shone bright, but then dimmed, Gabriel regained control of himself. He found the small chair that Jeep had been sitting in and pulled it next to the bed, taking up the position of the patient watcher, the careful sentinel who guarded the stricken, the weak, the wounded.

Max lay before him, her body small and pale. The soft skin above her collarbone was moist with sweat and her shoulders jerked every now and then, her right arm catching in the sling as she tried to move it.

Strange, he thought. This almost felt like a blessing.

And what Michael had said, what he had said.

_You have come to love her as well. _

It was becoming undeniable now, Gabriel realized. It was becoming unavoidable. And Michael had known, because he always knew. Because he was always right and never wrong.

_Love._

The word shredded his own stoicism, made him question what he had never questioned before.

_Love._

Did he love this woman? This sinful being. This creature with a stained soul, with the blood of Eve pulsing in her polluted veins.

She was all too human. All too fallible. A perfect imperfection.

Sitting there, so close to her, hearing the rush of her breath, smelling the sterile scent of the antiseptic Michael had splashed on her wounds, noticing the way she moved in her sleep, Gabriel knew that _he_ had been wrong.

The inevitable. The inevitable. _This_ was the inevitable. The fate that had circled and stalked him from the moment Max had found him in that dried out gully, from the instant she had looked at him and judged him and decided, against her deepest misgivings, to help him.

And he almost wished that she had left him in that gully, that she had been cruel, as he knew she could be. It would have been a blessing for them both. If only, if only…

This was not a blessing.

But here it was.

"It should not be like this," Gabriel said, speaking for the first time in hours, the muscles in his throat clenching as he tried to force the words out into the cold air. Cold. Cold. He was so cold. The bare flesh on his arms was chilled and he realized that he was without his under-tunic, having left the garment and his armor in the bathroom after his quarrel with Michael.

Gabriel shivered.

_Love. Love._

Yes, here it was. The most volatile of earthly emotions, a thing of instability, something that even he, an archangel, a servant of the Most High, could not command, could not bend to his will.

Gabriel wondered if he loved her, even though the wondering itself was futile, the last shred of his resistance.

_Love. Love. _

"Yes," he said simply. "Yes."

And what a tragedy it was. A tragedy that it should come now, on the day of Jack's death. A tragedy that it should come at all.

But he could not stop himself. The denial itself was agony and acknowledgement alone brought relief. Acceptance. Complete and utter acceptance.

"I should not," Gabriel said, even as he reached for her. Max's hand fit so easily in his and he stretched his arm across the coverlets, letting her palm touch his, letting her limp fingers fold over his knuckles. "I should not," he told her while she slept. "I should not, I should not…"

Hesitation. A moment of deliberation.

"Love," the angel said. "I love."

* * *

Gabriel awoke to the sound of a shovel hitting dirt. He was pulled from sleep, sitting upright as soon as he realized that his head was lying on the bed by Max's arm. Blinking, he saw that her hand still rested in his, her fingers spread out, the joints in her wrist relaxed.

He held her hand, he held on to her. And then he let her go.

_Let go. _

Gabriel shook his head. Sentiment did not suit his temperament. It was obtrusive. Unnecessary. With little difficulty, he buried his wispy metaphors along with all that was tenuous and misleading.

What remained was unadorned reality. The rough. The harsh. The ugly. And it was painful in its clarity, painful like the sound of a shovel hitting dirt, digging a grave for a child who had been cut down in a hail of gunfire because he had only wanted to help his aunt.

Bile rose up in his throat, reminding him of his hate, his rage. Gabriel gagged and coughed into his hand. His limbs were chilled and his joints ached and he felt almost old, almost fallible.

Almost human.

Another useless metaphor. Gabriel grimaced. He needed to get up. He needed to quit his sad, self-indulgent vigil and look out the window at the dawn, at the cold and clear morning light.

He pushed himself out of his chair, his knees cracking. The sound of shoveling was smoother now, low and throaty, not the rustling shower of sand and pebbles he had heard before. The topsoil had been broken, the meat of the earth exposed.

Gabriel glanced at the single window. And then he glanced at Max. Her head was turned away from him, the long line of her neck fully exposed, two smudges of red still branding the spot above her jugular where he had pressed his fingers the night before. The swelling on her brow had gone down, but her face looked puffy, especially around the eyes. The patch of blood on her bandaged arm, however, had not gotten any larger. Michael had said she was clotting. That was good sign. A promising sign.

Quickly, Gabriel checked her pulse and breathing, only allowing himself to sigh in relief when he noticed that both were steady. Her skin glided beneath his fingertips when he touched her neck just below the jaw line. She felt cool. Dry. There was no fever.

Another sigh, although this time, his relief was tempered by the sound of rising voices outside, near he window. Someone was talking. A male. Not Michael.

Jeep.

Gabriel recognized the lazy accent, the drawn-out vowels and gentle consonants and the casual tone that was even now softened by something like sadness. Approaching the window, he pulled back the dust-streaked curtains and looked into the yard. The bedroom was at the back of the house and he had a good view of the tack shed and the paddocks and the abandoned stable, which sat like an old relic on the distant reaches of the property.

The sun had just come up and it was weak. Muted light shone from behind high-blown, misty clouds and the patches of sky he sighted were a milky blue. A high wind rose. The gusts pulsed against the tiny house, picking up fistfuls of loose sand and hurling them at the faded aluminum siding.

_Ashes and dust_, Gabriel thought. _Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.** _

He saw it then, because it wasn't hard to miss. The grave, the open wound in the earth. Long and narrow, a little less than six feet deep, sitting in the shadow of the tack shed.

The tack shed Jack had played in when he was younger.

Jeep was visible only from the shoulders up, shoveling the gritty soil out of the hole and onto a less than neat pile on the rim of the grave. Michael crouched nearby, his own hands dirty. They had obviously been taking turns, human and angel, both tilling the soil.

It was almost poetic.

Gabriel turned from the window. He knew what was coming and it was awful. The burial of a child, the laying to rest of a young body primed for life, but now destined to rot.

He hated his morbidity.

But there would be no escaping this and Gabriel had loved Jack too much to stay huddled in the bedroom like some hibernating animal during the boy's burial. And yet, the prospect of standing on the edge of his grave, watching the sand and soil hit the body at it was dropped back into the hole, was almost overwhelming. Almost too much to bear.

And Gabriel, the archangel, the Left-Hand of God, the Messenger and the holy herald, wasn't certain that he could face such a trial. It was a testament to human suffering and he himself was inhuman, his heart having been created for an entirely different purpose.

How should it be, he mused, glancing at Max's crumpled form on the bed, that a human might be stronger than an angel of God. That men, who had borne such deep suffering for ages and ages and ages, could survive and withstand the great horror of it all.

_And yet, in the midst of all this darkness, I see some people who will not be bowed._

Michael. It had been Michael who had said that once. Michael who now stood on the edge of the grave with dirt on his hands, helping a human to bury a child that neither of them really knew.

Gabriel grimaced, realizing just how weak he was. The bedroom suddenly seemed small, a square box of a place that he had used to hide away from all that seemed so unfair, so unjust, so unexpected…

But that was over now. The child needed to be buried. And the task, though foul, was necessary. Gabriel could cope with necessities and he could understand efficiency. But as he tried to detach himself, as he attempted to sever the new, yet strong threads that connected him to Max and Jack, he realized that the cause was indeed lost.

He was in too deep. Already drowning. Already overcome.

And Gabriel looked at Max. And he gave in.

It was only for a moment, an innocent, inconsequential moment that could later be overlooked or ignored. Gabriel stole over to the bed and carefully, oh so carefully, lifted Max into his arms.

He held her.

And then he laid her back down, smoothed the blankets over her body, checked her breathing and her pulse, saw that she was safe and slumbering and alive and…

…and peaceful.

_Not for long_, Gabriel thought.

He left the room.

* * *

There was no one in the house, or at least, no one Gabriel could see as he crept down the hall towards the bathroom. And the solitude itself was pleasant. It gave him a moment to collect himself, to gather what remained of his stoicism, the single virtue he had once prized, the core strength he hoped would carry him through what was to come. There was an empty grave that needed to be filled, after all.

Almost unconsciously, Gabriel began to steel himself as he approached the bathroom door. The room, he found, was much as he had left it. The medicine cabinet was still on the floor, the shower rod sitting lopsided in the tub. Michael had not finished cleaning his armor. A vambrace laid in the sink. His breastplate covered the bathroom mat.

Gabriel picked up his armor and stacked it neatly next to the sink, finding his under tunic by the tub. He slipped it on, grimacing as the blood-stiffened leather slithered over his torso. He felt like a fiend then. A ghoul.

But there was no regret. No mercy. Not even for the boy who had begged for his life.

Gabriel left the bathroom, moving into the kitchen and then the garage. He paused by the pick-up truck, standing by the cab for a long minute as he tried to steady his breathing. His heart murmured in his ears, speaking of his sorrow and the fear that it brought.

Perhaps he could not face this. Perhaps he was weak. Perhaps he was…

_Jack._

Gabriel left the garage. He walked out into the sunshine and the wind and felt the grains of sand whisper across his cheeks, scratching his flesh which was still tender from the touch of too many tears.

He circled the house until he came to place where the land sloped off towards the empty, haunted paddocks and the weather-beaten tack shed. Charlie saw him first. She was sitting on an old picnic bench that had been pushed up against the back wall of the house and her baby was tucked safely in her arms. The wind played with her errant curls. She looked at Gabriel and said nothing.

There were tears in her eyes.

Michael was standing in the grave now, his wings lifted high because they would not fit in the narrow hole. He drove the spade of the shovel into the soil and threw the dirt over the edge. Jeep stood nearby. He had a hammer and nails and two pieces of wood in his hands that looked as though they had been salvaged from one of the old stalls in the stable. He was making a cross.

_Joseph_, Gabriel thought. _The carpenter._

"Do we know what his name was?" Jeep asked. He pounded a rusty looking nail into the center of the cross and the soft wood split a little. Jeep hissed. "Damn."

"Jack," Michael replied, not missing a beat in his shoveling. "His name was Jack."

Jeep, who had another nail stuck between his lips, looked over his shoulder at Michael. "I meant his last name. Do you know his last name?"

"Greene," Charlie said.

Jeep spat out his nail into his palm and Michael stopped shoveling. They both turned to look at her. And in seeing her, they saw Gabriel.

"Brother!" Michael threw down the shovel at once, bracing his arms on either side of the grave as he hoisted himself out. The movement caused a stream of dirt to trickle back into the hole, pebbles rolling, sand shifting. He rounded the gave and approached Gabriel, his face kind and open and…concerned. _Concerned. _

His brother was still concerned for him, after he had been cursed, after he had been rejected, after he had been accused of the most heinous crime.

And then Gabriel realized. Michael always had been forgiving. Merciful.

_I would not have shown you such mercy._

He could not bear to look at him. It hurt to see him striding across the yard with dirt on his hands and his lips pursed with worry and his eyes strong, but still shining with tears.

Gabriel turned away from him, and forced his focus elsewhere. Anywhere else.

His gaze landed on Charlie. "How did you know?" he asked her quietly. "How did you know Jack's name?"

The woman shrugged, her fingers plucking at her baby's swaddling, pulling the edge of the blanket closer to the infant's round cheeks. The motion disturbed her son. He started to cry.

"I didn't," Charlie replied, rocking the baby. "I went looking for a blanket for Robbie last night and I found…well, I went into Jack's room and I found a notebook along with the rest of his stuff. It had his name on the inside cover. Jack Greene," she murmured, "but I wonder, is Jack short for John?" Her tone was melancholy, a wispy, breathy thing that the wind took and distorted until the echo of her voice was far away.

Gabriel found something familiar in her sorrow. It was the grief of the Madonna.

He ran his tongue along his teeth. There was the distinct possibility, he realized, that he had wrong about Charlie as well. The profane waitress. The guarded woman with tobacco stains on her fingers and a smoker's cough. The unwilling mother.

Perhaps he had been wrong. Perhaps he had misjudged.

He thought of Max and how ugly she had first been to him. He thought of Jack and how weak the child had seemed when he had climbed down into the gully with his first aid kit and a stolen flashlight.

These humans were deceptive. Not what they seemed. Never what they seemed.

"Gabriel." Michael's hand lit upon his shoulder, smearing dirt on the short sleeve of his tunic. "Where is Max?"

Gabriel hesitated, reacting to the numbness that closed over his heart. He was still uncertain and his vigilance was tempered by potent mistrust.

Michael. His brother had known all along, had made Max one of his prophets, had made her _his…_

Instinctively, Gabriel glanced at the open grave and thought of the body that would soon fill it.

_Jack. _

"I cannot decide," he said, the words rushing from his mouth, colored by the intensity of his shame, "which one of us is to blame."

Michael squeezed his shoulder and left mud-colored thumbprints on his arm. "Never mind," he said, radiating the compassion Gabriel so envied, that he himself lacked. "Is Max still in the bedroom?"

"Sleeping," Gabriel replied. His chest ached when he tried to breathe. The wind was treacherous, pulling the air from his lips until he felt smothered. "Or unconscious. I cannot tell. But her pulse is even. She breathes quietly. No fever."

Michael stared at his boots, his voice suddenly husky. "You took care of her."

"I did."

"And you took care of Jack."

Gabriel's jaw locked and he sputtered. The boy, his head shattered by a bullet, the blood-stained bed of the pick-up, the yawning, hungry grave.

"No," he insisted. "I failed."

He expected Michael to comfort him, to offer up consoling wisdom. But he did not.

He said nothing

Releasing his grip on his shoulder, Michael moved away, walking around the sloping rim of the grave, inspecting his undertaker's craft. He reached for the shovel and stuck it upright in the soil.

Jeep approached, his cross ready, the left arm slightly cracked. He had used a black marker to write the name _Jack Greene _across the middle in chunky letters.

"All right," he said, his lips trembling a little. "All right."

Charlie stood, a vision of the blessed mother, weighed down by the precious burden of the tiny child in her arms.

"Jack," she muttered. "I wonder if that was short for John. Or James, maybe."

And Michael glanced a the tack shed. The door was open and Gabriel realized then what it was.

A mortuary.

A crypt.

"Brother," Michael said, a shade falling over his face as the clouds in the sky thickened. "Would you like to carry the body?"

* * *

They buried Jack. Buried him in the shadow of the tack shed with a little, one-foot cross planted over his grave. Two moldy sticks of wood nailed together by a young carpenter. A meaningless name inscribed with erasable ink. The humans stood on one side of the grave, the angels on the other, and there was a terrible silence which only the wind interrupted with its brazen impudence and impiety.

The grave was a mound of earth. Of sand. And Jack lay beneath it, still wrapped in the crocheted afghan, not even allotted the dignity of a coffin to keep his remains temporarily safe from the earth worms and the desert vermin.

Gabriel stood closest to the cross, sickened and revolted, his stomach clenching and unclenching, forcing him to keep his lips sealed as nausea rose in his gorge.

Charlie cried. Jeep stuck his hands in his pockets and stared at the distant mountains which were colored a faint, chalk-white that morning. Michael held his hand over his heart.

"You know," Charlie said, her voice coming out as a meager hiccup over her tears. "Someone should really say something."

"Poor kid," Jeep replied. He ran the toe of his sneaker over a dislodged rock. "He seemed real nice."

"Too young," Charlie said. "Like Audrey."

Gabriel looked up at her, but her face was innocent, no hidden accusation lurking beneath her genuine grief.

"There is not much to say," Michael told them. His words were clipped, emotion straining in every phrase. "There is not much."

But Gabriel disagreed, for in reality, he knew that there was too much to say. Too much that he wanted to shout and scream and sob. Too much that he wanted to ask the Father. Too much that he wanted to know but was afraid to discover.

_Who was to blame? _

He was surprised when he got his answer, standing by that ugly cross, watching as the loose sand was scattered by the irreverent wind.

_No one. No one at all._

Gabriel looked at Michael.

_I am sorry_, he thought, but did not say it.

He did not say it. He did not say anything at all.

_Jack…_

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! In chapter eighteen, Max finally awakens and both Michael and Gabriel find themselves facing the terrible challenge of informing her of her nephew's death. As always, the next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. I hope you all have a fabulous week.

_*This line comes from the 2008 film adaptation of John Patrick Shanley's play "Doubt: A Parable"._

_**This line comes from the phrase "Remember that thou are dust and to dust thou shalt return" found in Genesis 3:19. In the Roman Catholic tradition, it is spoken by the priest during the application of ashes on Ash Wednesday, the holy day that signifies the beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. _


	18. Chapter Eighteen Scream

**Author's Note: **For the record, this chapter is very bleak, however, I do promise this is the _last_ super bleak chapter in this story. Things will start to get better from here on out…just not right now. ;)

As always, I would like to thank all my wonderful readers and reviewers, **Fyrefly, ArmoredSoul, saichick** and **Yes-Man**. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys are the best! Thank you all so much. I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Eighteen Scream**

Michael stood outside the bedroom door, one hand gripping the knob, his fingers scrubbed clean of the funeral dirt and grit. He turned and glanced at Gabriel.

"Are you calm?"

There was an insinuation in the question, one that irked Gabriel. The left corner of his mouth lifted in a grimace, his cheek muscles bunching. "I am calm."

Michael's brows were raised, his expression sculpted by deep skepticism and not a little apprehension. Worried lines furrowed his forehead. He looked old and tired.

"Excuse my doubt," he said, his voice guttural as it echoed in the tight confines of the hallway, "but your recent behavior has left me uncertain. You barricaded yourself in this room last night-"

"I know."

"And we have just finished burying the child," Michael said, overriding Gabriel's denial. "Brother, I need to know." He paused, holding out one palm, the gesture an offering of peace. "Are you calm?"

Gabriel pressed his knuckles over his eyes, willing his frustration to ease. The house was quiet and they were alone. Jeep and Charlie had taken the baby for a walk by the stables after the funeral, and their discreet leave-taking was a sign in and of itself, the acceptance of what was to come, what was bearing down on them all. The cornerstone of the tragedy had yet to find its place. Max did not know that her nephew was dead.

And Gabriel had always been the Messenger. He had always been the Messenger.

It had been Michael's idea to attend to the matter at once. Gabriel, for his part, had not openly opposed the plan, relinquishing a good share of his stubbornness and uncertainty. But the residue of his mistrust remained, colored now by a sort of rising fear that chipped away at his resolve until he felt weak. And there was doubt as well. Treacherous doubt, and he hated what his suspicions had done to him. Hated the very potent streak of paranoia that had suddenly distorted the world and made Michael the enemy. Michael, his own beloved brother…

"Did you intentionally deceive me?" he asked abruptly, answering Michael's tiresome question with a query of his own. "Did you hide what you knew of Max?"

"What I knew?"

"She is a prophet," Gabriel said, hoping Michael heard the accusation in his statement.

His brother's shoulders sagged, the tips of his wings gouging little holes in the carpeted floor. "I did not know," he said softly.

Now it was Gabriel's turn to be skeptical and he enjoyed the shift of power. "Impossible."

"I _still_ do not know," Michael insisted, "but are my suspicions enough?"

Gabriel knew he had the chance to be cruel then, to repay Michael for whatever tiny faults and slights he had accumulated over the years, to be brash and arrogant and remind him of his failure, as his brother had when they both stood on that mountaintop and nothing but blood ran between them.

_Mercy_, a long-buried instinct told him. _Have mercy._

And it was painful, yielding to it. Gabriel looked away from Michael, the veins in his neck too tense, ready to burst. "Tell me," he said, "do you have her best interests at heart?"

"Always."

"Always," Gabriel echoed. He didn't like the sound of that. _Always. _It was too permanent a word, too self-assured.

Michael's face blanched, his hand curling over the knob. "Gabriel, let me help her, please."

"I will not interfere."

"You misunderstand me," Michael said, showing, for the first time, his own violent desperation. "I cannot do this alone."

And Gabriel didn't have to ask what he meant. He knew already.

_Jack…_

"No," he conceded tersely.

"Together, then?" Michael asked.

Gabriel waved an impatient hand at the door, suppressing his fear and doubt and mistrust in favor of weak neutrality. But he could not be neutral, he could not be impassive when Jack was dead and Max didn't know and every nerve in his body was on fire, telling him that what he was about to do was terrible. Cruel.

"Yes," he said and that was all.

Michael did not protest. He put his shoulder to the door and pushed, as if expecting to meet the same resistance he had the night before. But Gabriel had moved the dresser back to its original place before he left the room and the door opened easily, the bottom of it skimming over the carpet with a faint whisper.

Michael went in first and Gabriel followed him. For a moment, both brothers stood at the foot of the bed and watched Max. She had rolled over onto her side, the elbow of her injured arm sticking up into the air, the white sling making it look, for all the world, like a broken wing.

"She is…peaceful," Michael commented, his jaw loose as he chewed over the words. The room was quiet, the chaotic energy of the previous day having been drained away and replaced with a sort of mild staleness. The dull sunlight had painted the walls and carpet a drab, uniform grey and the world seemed lifeless.

"It will not last," Gabriel said. He took up his old spot in the chair by the bedside, reaching over to touch Max's neck with two of his fingers. Her pulse was strong and she did not labor to breathe.

Michael appeared thoughtful. He started to lean back against the dresser but then stopped, his wings brushing the shattered top drawer.

"Gabriel?" he questioned, taking in the traces of sawdust and splintered wood.

Gabriel shrugged. "An accident."

"Fair enough," Michael replied. He moved cautiously over to the other side of the bed, lowering himself down on the edge. The mattress squeaked, the old box spring pressed to hold the rather significant weight of an archangel. "The bandages are soiled, I must change them," Michael said, speaking more to himself than to Gabriel. The surface of the vanity was still littered with the tools of his doctoring. Michael fetched himself a roll of gauze, a few alcohol pads and a scissor. "Let us pray that she has not begun to fester."

"No fever," Gabriel said mechanically.

Michael raised his eyes to briefly and gave him what could have been a sympathetic smile. "A good sign, I should say." Gently, he slipped the sling off of Max's shoulder, pulling her arm so that it laid straight across his lap. Taking the scissors, he snipped the end of the gauze and unwound it from her wrist.

The blotchy stains on the bandage were brown in color, Gabriel noted. Not red. There was no fresh blood.

Another good sign.

And the wound, once revealed, was tiny enough. The stitches were small and neat, but the skin had swelled. Michael cleaned the dried blood away with an alcohol pad, then threw the swab in the trash can.

"No puss," he said, turning her wrist over in his hands. "Still, I would feel better if-"

Max moved, pulling her arm out of Michael's grasp. Her wrist hit the blue coverlets and the sensitive, bruised flesh came into contact with the scratchy sheets. A low, wet gurgle sounded in her throat. She opened her eyes…and looked at Gabriel.

He held her gaze for as long as he could, which was only for an instant, before he looked away. His hands were resting atop his knees and he sat still in the chair, sat still and silent so as not to shake loose his wild grief, the rabid howling within him that even now roared in his ears.

_She does not know_, it told him. _She does not know._

Gabriel pressed his lips together, fearing that the words might spring from his mouth before he'd be able to stop them.

_She does not know and someone must tell her._

"Max?" Michael adjusted himself on the edge of the bed, his hand fastening over her wounded wrist and keeping it steady. "Do you know who I am?"

The gurgle in the back of her throat became a groan. Max's back arched slightly, her head lifting off the bed. "The medal," she rasped.

Michael nodded his encouragement. "The St. Michael medal, that's right."

Max craned her neck, rolling her head so that she could better see Gabriel. Her mouth puckered, a faint, shadow of a smile making her look wretchedly vulnerable.

Gabriel's stomach soured.

"Yeah," Max said, her voice becoming stronger as she swallowed away the dryness in her mouth, "I know you guys."

He tried to return her weak grin, tried to be calm as Michael was, even though he knew what was coming.

Gabriel turned his gaze towards Michael, seeking, for the first time, some sense of direction. His brother had been right, after all, as he was right about all things. This trial could not be borne alone.

But Michael had assumed the role of doctor once more, his bedside manner soft and reassuring. He held Max's injured wrist gently, keeping her hand balanced on his knee.

"You've had an accident," he said slowly. "Gabriel and I are taking care of you."

Max muttered something incoherent in response and suddenly, she tried to rise, pushing her shoulders up off the bed as she reeled drunkenly. Both of the brothers reached for her, but Gabriel managed to steady her first, his hands supporting her back.

"My head," Max moaned. "It's fucking killing me. Oh my God…oh God…I need to be sick!"

She doubled over, retching. Michael released her wrist, grabbing the trash can and bringing it near her head.

Max vomited, her empty stomach bringing up only mucus and bile. Gabriel braced her shoulders, her whole body shuddering as she gagged and gagged and gagged. Her messy hair swung in her face and a string of spit caught on a strand.

Instinctively, Gabriel gathered her hair in his hands and pulled it behind her neck.

"Breathe," he heard himself saying, "through your nose."

Max finished and she gulped air. A small, shaky sob broke from her and she moved to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Wait, wait!" Michael grabbed a scrap of gauze from the vanity and dabbed at her lips. "She may have a concussion," he said. "Max, you need to lie down again."

"It's better if I sit," Max mumbled. "I'm so nauseous…so sick."

"Gabriel, help her," Michael said in a harried tone.

Gabriel hesitated, his skin prickling as an uncommon feeling of awkwardness swept over him. Gingerly, he eased himself off the chair and onto the bed, his broad chest supporting Max as she slumped against him, gasping. Her sharp shoulder blades dug into his stomach, jabbing the tender skin by his own still healing wound. Gabriel set his jaw, his fingers curling around her biceps. It was difficult to keep her still and be gentle at the same time and the large angel felt his cheeks grow hot as he recognized his own clumsiness.

"You should do as Michael says," he managed, dipping his chin so that he could whisper into Max's ear. His voice was rough, strained by the unhappy tears he had shed and the emotion he now tried to subdue. "Lie back down," he instructed firmly. "You are not well enough to sit up."

But Max was oblivious to his advice. She thrashed her legs, curling them underneath her until the sheets and blankets became entangled. Her hands were trembling and she kept trying to touch her forehead, though Michael easily restrained her.

"My head, my head," she moaned. "God, the room is spinning…"

She squinted at them both, her face screwed up in a crude grimace.

"She may very well have a concussion," Michael repeated. He had both of Max's wrists pinned on his lap. "I need to check her eyes. Max? Did you hear me? I need to check your eyes…let me see."

Keeping her wrists captured in his left hand, Michael planted the palm of his right on her temple, carefully prying open one of his eyes. "Look into the light," he said. "Look at the window and let me see. I need to see your pupils, just for a moment."

Max obliged, as best she could, although she did groan when Michael turned her chin to the window, where weak sunlight drifted through the dirty, wind-rattled glass panes.

"Good," Michael said gently. "Good, you're doing well, Max."

"Enough with the goddamned pep talk," Max said, her head flopping against Gabriel's chest.

The angel felt his eyes widen and his ears ring at such profanity, but if Michael noticed it, he said nothing. Instead, his brother looked kindly at Max, his face touched only with sadness.

"A mild concussion," he told Gabriel, "though we'll have to watch the vomiting. She is conscious, at the very least."

"The _very_ least," Gabriel replied. Max had turned her head to the side and her cheek was pressed to his breast, just above the place where his heart beat. It was a primal moment, feeling her own breath fill her body and hearing his lungs respond with an echo of their own. He decided that this was the closest he had ever felt to Max-or any human, for that matter. It was a time when life itself seemed fluid, when two separate existences could run together in harmony…or something very like harmony.

But then Gabriel remembered what had been happened, how the world had been shattered and how a twelve-year-old boy now laid buried in the earth, his little body suffocated beneath six feet of dirt and sand…

Max shifted, lifting her head off Gabriel's chest. "Your heart," she muttered vaguely, "is beating very fast." She paused, then added. "God, I'm so nauseous."

"Breathe through your nose," Gabriel said automatically, embarrassed by his all too evident emotion.

Michael placed a comforting hand on Max's shoulder. "It's the concussion making you ill," he explained. "We do not have any pain medication for you, but I will try to find some if I can."

"I…I had a concussion before," Max said. She was inhaling heavily through her nose, her breath whistling through her nostrils. Gabriel noticed how she swallowed every few seconds, trying to rid her throat of the uncomfortable tightness. "It wasn't even anything cool, you know," she rambled on. "Not like I got pistol-whipped or beat over the head by a bad guy. My partner and I, we…uh, it was the summertime, I think. A few years ago…July. My partner and I, we were coming down the stairs at this apartment complex and it was raining. I was two steps from the bottom, only two steps and then I slipped and fell and cracked my head. It was so fucking embarrassing." She paused, offering them both a sloppy smile. "I'm kinda fucking embarrassed now, to be honest. Puking my guts up in front of two angels…so fucking embarrassing."

"It's all right." Michael let his hand fall on her knee, though his eyes lingered on Gabriel. "Let me get her some water."

He rose, the mattress jolting, the sheets showing a faint imprint where he had been sat. Gabriel heard Michael move down the hall and into the kitchen. A cabinet door opened and a tap was turned on. Water splashed in the sink.

Max groaned, her head falling back against his shoulder, touching the place where his skin was still scabbed over. But Gabriel ignored the pain. It was a small thing, a small price to pay for being close to her, feeling the simple rhythm of life in her body. She breathed deeply. And then she looked up at him and smiled.

"You're very quiet," Max said. Her gaze was a child's, shy and soft. The ugly gash on her brow, the swelling of her temple, made her face look almost lopsided.

Gabriel tried to smile for her. "I _am_ quiet," he acknowledged.

Max seemed as though she were about to say something else. She turned her head to the side, her lips moving indistinctly, the veins by her throat constricting as she attempted to talk past the nausea.

And Gabriel's body froze, for he thought he knew what was coming. She would ask him a question, the _dreaded_ question and he would have to answer. His tongue would form the words and he would speak and she would know. He would hurt her because he had to, because it necessary, because it was cruel. And he was, he realized, a creature of abject cruelty.

Gabriel's arms began to ache as he held her there against him. His wrists weakened. His hands trembled. He thought he would have to let Max go, lest she see how afflicted he was. But strangely enough, his grip only tightened around her frame, only pulled her closer, even though he knew she could feel all that was weak about him.

_Let her see_, he thought. _She must see. _

It would be better if she knew of his fragility. They were alike in that way, after all. Human and angel. Creatures of God. Both so fatally weak. So perfectly, perfectly flawed.

_Let her see_, his mind urged him again. _Let her see that she is not alone._

Michael came back into the room then. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and slipped inside, a glass of water in one hand, a damp towel in the other.

"Drink slowly," he instructed Max, helping her to hold the cup.

She sipped a little, made a face and coughed. "I hate tap water."

Michael took the glass from her and placed it on the vanity. "It will help with the nausea, and this," he paused, lifting the towel to her brow, "this might help with the pain."

He pressed the terrycloth to her forehead, applying the smallest bit of pressure to the compress. "Can you hold it there?"

Max didn't respond, but raised her hand and slapped it over the towel. "Very cold," she muttered.

"So the swelling will go down," Michael replied. "The cut on your brow is-"

"Ugly?" Max supplied and Gabriel was shocked when she laughed. "I must look like Frankenstein's monster or something. Black stitches all over the place."

"Do not say that," Gabriel said at once. "You are not ugly. You have never been ugly"

Michael looked up at him quickly, his lips pushed together in a confused frown.

Gabriel flushed. He recognized how unnecessary his emotion was. Over-indulgent, really. He ran his tongue over his teeth and forced his face into a neutral expression, loosening his tensed jaw. The taut skin around his cheeks softened and the continuous ache between his eyes lessened. He knew what was coming and it was terrible, but that did not make intemperance acceptable.

There was something very redeeming about stoicism, after all. Something that Max herself seemed to appreciate. Gabriel had allowed himself to give into unfettered emotion the night before and the results had benefited no one. Not himself. Not Max. And certainly not Jack.

_Jack…_

But oh, it was horrible to sit there and hold Max in his arms and to know, _know_.

And he was the Messenger. He always had been.

Gabriel looked at Michael and something passed between them, an acceptance, a resignation, a steadying of the nerves and perhaps, a hardening of hearts. Because they would have to be cruel to do this, so very cruel.

"Max," Michael said slowly. His body was relaxed, although Gabriel noticed that his brother had fisted his hands in the bed sheets. "Tell me, what do you remember of your accident?"

"Uh." Max bowed her head, the fair fringe of her hair dusting Gabriel's forearms.

The angel could smell the sweat on her, along with the noxious scent of vomit and stale blood. But he held her nonetheless, completely immune to the most basic repulsion.

"Uh." Max moved the wet towel across her forehead, her bleary, blood-shot eyes focusing in on her wounded wrist. "That guy…he was wearing this greasy baseball cap…he shot me," she said and there was a note of incredulity in her voice. "Shit. I let him get my gun. I can't believe I did that."

"It's all right," Michael repeated. "Memory loss is expected." He glanced up at his brother, his mouth a grim slash.

Gabriel understood, although that did not make the horror any easier to swallow. He wondered if Michael wanted him to tell her now before she herself became aware. Would it be better that way? Would the shock of it be numbing enough to stay the first pangs of grief?

Gabriel had his doubts.

"Max," he began, not knowing exactly what he intended to say, but hoping that the words would come to him. His mouth suddenly felt dry and he took a breath, the air hitting the back of his throat. Gabriel coughed. "Max, I want you tell me, what is the very last thing you remember?"

But Max wasn't listening to him. She muttered something incoherent, dropping her hand that held the towel onto her lap. "I can't believe he shot me," she said. "I can't believe I let him get my gun. That's…that's the worst thing a cop can do. They always told us, always, guard your hostler. Stand at a certain angle so the perp can't reach over and just…what the hell was I doing?"

_Protecting Jack_, Gabriel thought. _Giving your life for the boy._

She had tried, he knew. She had tried so hard. And yet, she had failed.

"We make mistakes," Michael said. He let his fingers uncurl from the sheets, although his shoulders were still tensed, the line of his back stiff and unyielding. "We _all_ make mistakes."

"I can't…I can't believe…," Max continued on. She seemed to curl into herself like a dying spider, tucking her legs close to her body until she was pressed against Gabriel. And there was something uncertain about the way she held herself, he realized. A sudden hesitation. A deep, unwavering trepidation.

Max let the wet towel slip for her head. It fell, hitting the floor with a sighing sound. Her lips began to tremble. "I can't…I can't…"

Gabriel's heart slowed until each beat was a dull thud in his chest. _It was coming. It was coming. _It was here.

"Hey," Max said, "hey, where's Jack?"

There it was. Yes, there it was. His stomach plummeted and a feeling of warmth rose in him, the heat quickly becoming overwhelming as it had the night before. And he was sick again. And the grief was new and fresh and he could not breathe, he could not breathe.

But somehow he must speak. _Messenger_, he thought, feeling her body in his arms and knowing, all the while that he would break what was left of her. _I am the Messenger._

Speak. And he would speak. The words were already in his mouth, already coating his tongue like bile. Gabriel hunched his back, his head falling over her shoulder, his chin pressed against her collarbone.

"Max," he said, but he was unable to continue. Why had she asked so soon? Why was she making him do this? "Max," Gabriel tried again.

But he was failing. He was trying and he was failing. Like Max. Like her.

It was Michael who finally spoke for him. His beloved brother.

"Jack is dead," he said and his words were a sacrifice, an offering to Gabriel who could only tremble, who was terribly weak in a moment that required only strength.

"He was shot by the same men that attacked you," Michael continued. "He did not suffer. He is at peace."

Finished. It was finished quickly. Or perhaps it was just beginning? Gabriel straightened up and looked at Max. And Michael looked at Max. And they both sat there in questionable silence, waiting for her to realize, to understand.

Her nephew was dead. He was dead…

But Max didn't. She didn't understand.

Instead, she blinked and grimaced, her mouth twisting up in a questioning sort of frown. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she said.

"No," Gabriel said, finding what remained of his resolve. "No," he said and his voice shook.

"Listen to me." Michael reached across the bed and took her hand in his. Gabriel noticed how his face had flushed, how the color had risen in his cheeks, bringing with it the rush of heat and heady heartsickness.

_He feels it too_, he thought and he wasn't sure if that was a comfort or not.

"The men waylaid you on the highway, they had the road blockaded," Michael pressed on. He was driving the nail deeper and deeper, waiting until he hit the nerve, until the pain became excruciating but real. _Real. _"They wanted to take your car, but you would not let them. You were strong, Max. You fought very hard, I know you did_. _But you were outnumbered and Jack wanted to help you. He was caught in the crossfire. He died instantly. There was no pain. I promise you, I promise you that. There was no pain and he is at peace."

More silence. Time dripped and dragged, pulling at the loose threads of Gabriel's restraint until he was tempted again by his tears. But Max did not cry. A sheen of sweat made her brow slick and her breath came hard and she looked as though she wanted to be angry, as though she were reaching for rage but could find only the desperate hollowness of despair.

She clicked her teeth together, her expression menacing not altogether sane. "You've got to be fucking kidding me," she repeated, spitting the words out. There was almost something of childish petulance about her, of adolescent rebellion and unfounded defiance. Her chin jutted out and she tried to square her shoulders, although she was still too weak to sit upright.

"It's…it's nonsense, it's damn nonsense," Max sputtered, her words simple, but infused with a plaintive bleat, a sad, lonely lament. It was the keening of an abandoned soul. All shuddering fragility and misplaced hope.

Gabriel pressed his chin to her neck, feeling the phrases vibrate in her throat, feeling her pulse rise until the beat was frantic and she was a trapped creature. A bleeding, dying beast.

And he held her, because it was the only thing he could think of to do. Because his body was numb, his skin shrinking on his bones as the realization dawned and grew.

"He is dead, Max," he said at length, finally finding his courage.

"Listen to Gabriel," Michael added with sorrowful resignation. "Do you believe him?"

She did not.

"Is this another one of your games?" Max asked, pulling her injured arm from Michael's grasp and brandishing it in his face. "Is…is this another game? Are you trying to play me like him?"

Michael shook his head empathetically. "Max, I do not understood."

But Gabriel did. He had heard such words before from her and even now, his mind labored under the surprising strength of her venom.

"Are you trying to play me too?" Max continued. Her arm thumped down on the bed. "Are…are you…I don't even want to hear this shit, because you know, he tried to pull this stunt too and I stopped him." And suddenly, she was twisting around, turning her anger on Gabriel, venting her indignant fury and umbrage. "I stopped him when he tried to kiss me."

Michael uttered a wordless sound, his eyes pulled wide with disbelief. He looked at Gabriel.

But Gabriel was beyond such reproach, beyond even the taint of shame. He could only feel the immediate and the immediate was Max, Max who was still fighting for her nephew's life although she had already failed.

It was pathetic. And tragic. Like watching her drown, seeing her grope and pull at the water, seeing her clutch at the nothingness as the waves closed over her head, the mouth opened, begging the living world for one final breath. For one final, restoring breath…

But the end would come. It always did.

Max turned away from him, although her body did waver slightly, her balance unsteady. She stared at Michael and gave him a triumphant sort of smile that was horrible for its absolute delusion. "I stopped him because I wouldn't take his shit and he knows it," she said. "So I'm telling you now to cut the crap. I don't care that I have a dent in my head and a hole in my wrist. This is ridiculous. This is fucking ridicu-"

"Max," Michael said, his voice a subtle murmur. "We buried Jack this morning. By the tack shed."

Silence then.

Gabriel blinked. His eyes were wet and for a moment, he thought he might weep, weep with all abandon as he had the day before, when Michael had comforted him as they sat together in the bathroom. But that time was over now. This grief, this sorrow, was no longer his own. It belonged to Max. It was hers and he could not pollute it with his sobs and raw laments. He could only sit there with her, as Michael had with him, could only sit and wait and watch the thing unfold and when it was done, when it was done…

Well, he didn't know. That was for later. Not now. Not now.

Instinctively, he draped his arms securely around Max, his wrists laying against her waist. He had held her the same way that morning, before the funeral, when he knew what she was to him, this little human, this woman he loved.

"Max," he spoke her name, he called to her.

But she did not listen.

"You buried him?" she asked, jabbing Michael with her pronged questions, poking and prodding as she searched for any sign of weakness.

Michael nodded gravely. "We had a funeral. Gabriel and myself. Jeep and Charlie."

"By the tack shed?" Max muttered. She seemed to be trying to lift her bruised brows in an expression of derisive sarcasm, but his forehead was too swollen. Instead, she only succeeded in looking particularly wide-eyed. "By the tack shed? Show me. I want you to show me. Right now. Show me right now, Michael!" Her voice became frayed at the end, as if even she did not trust in her brash defiance and denial. "Show me the damn grave. Show me where you buried him by the tack shed."

Michael looked quickly at his brother, his mouth narrow with worry and blatant indecision. But Gabriel's mind was empty and he could say nothing, only think of Max and how horrible the truth would be for her when she finally knew it, when she finally realized.

She had tried to protect her nephew and she had failed.

"Max," Michael said abruptly. He reached for her, trying to hold her still even as she swayed near the edge of the bed.

"Are you going to take me?" she threw back at him.

"Rest now," Michael soothed.

"You're a liar," Max muttered, her lips curling in disgust. She threw Michael off her. "Both of you. Why are you doing this? I don't…I don't understand why you think you can do this."

"Max!" Michael pleaded. Again, he looked to his brother. "Gabriel, please help me. Please…reason with her…Max, stay still! You are going to hurt yourself."

She was failing her arms madly, this drowning woman, her shoulder wedged against his chest. "Fuck you!" she growled. "Fuck you both. Just let me go and I'll see for myself. But you're afraid…what a fucking liar you are."

Max slapped him. She raised her hand and slapped Michael straight across his cheek, flesh hitting flesh, the sound echoing in the all too quiet house like a gunshot.

That fatal gunshot…

The slap was weak, but enough to stun both the angels. Michael leaned back away from Max and Gabriel released her waist and then she fell forward, fell, fell, fell…

Max tumbled to the floor, her injured arm sweeping across the vanity, knocking the glass of water to the floor. It shattered.

Michael jumped to his feet and Gabriel followed. They both stood over Max, who was laying on the floor with water and glass all over her t-shirt, her legs still tangled in the bed sheets. Fresh blood dribbled from the stitched wound on her wrist.

She looked up at them both, a broken woman. A wretched, injured animal howling out a final protest as death slowly, but inevitably came. "Sick bastards."

"Oh!" Michael gasped and for the first time, Gabriel thought he looked helpless. Hopeless and helpless. "Max-" He began to bend forward, but Gabriel stopped him.

"I will take her," he said and paused, letting the words echo in his mind before he dared to speak them. "Will you help me?"

* * *

For some reason, Gabriel almost believed that the freshly filled grave and the grotesque cross wouldn't be there. An irrational part of him had already dismissed the horror and delusion sufficed where reality failed. Nothing, however, could be more real than that sandy mound of disturbed earth with the miserable wooden maker. The truth itself was relentless and it swept down on them all, Michael, Gabriel and Max, as walked towards Jack's final resting place.

Gabriel was carrying the woman in his arms. She was wrapped in a lumpy blanket and she stayed quite still while he held her, her bruised head resting against his shoulder. Although her weight was slight, Gabriel's arms shook and he could not help but remember that it had only been a few hours ago, a few short hours, that he had laid the body of her nephew in his burial plot. They had only buried Jack in an afghan, a brightly colored, chaotic collection of crocheted threads that had been dyed red in some places. And the boy's body had been cold, so cold and Gabriel had felt his flesh through the blanket.

Life gone, erased. Life taken. Life stolen.

And Max still didn't realize. She still didn't understand.

Gabriel wasn't certain he wanted her to.

But he carried her to the grave, nonetheless. Took her around the back of the house where the weather-beaten picnic bench was and the whole of the property spread out in one grand display of reaching wilderness and the silence was profound, so profound that all the world itself seemed mute.

They walked around the house, two angels and a woman, and they came to the place where the spectral image of the tack shed sheltered the horrible secret, that little pile of disturbed earth. That ugly cross.

When she saw the grave, Max did not move and Gabriel thought that he heard her breathing slow, her blood chugging sluggishly through her veins as she stared and stared and stared.

But Gabriel only gripped her tighter as the silence deepened and he wished that she would break it, that she would cede her tenuous hold on denial and the let the truth overwhelm her.

It had already overwhelmed him.

And yet the quiet continued, dropping them all into a ringing stillness that echoed with each drumming beat of Gabriel's heart. He wondered, vaguely, if Max could hear it. Or perhaps she deaf, deaf and dumb to everything save the wretched spectacle of that crude grave.

It was Michael who broke the silence at last. He stepped into the shadow of the tack shed which was much shorter than it had been that morning, stepped between the grave and Max, his mouth moving convulsively, his eyes losing their brilliant clarity in favor of tears.

"I am sorry, Max," he said. "I can say nothing else, but I am sorry."

"I am sorry," Gabriel repeated lamely. His jaw was stiff and it hurt him to speak the weak words. What remained of his angelic eloquence was sacrificed for numbing pity and grief. Instead of laboring over the phrases, he wrapped his arms around Max, as if their physical closeness could somehow blot out what was coming. But the wind was sinister and it battered them both with each thundering, unforgiving gust. It threatened to tear them apart

Max squirmed and lifted her head off his shoulder. "His name," she muttered, "you misspelled his name. There's no third 'e', only two."

She squirmed again, her bare heels thudding against Gabriel's right hip. "I want you to put me down."

Gabriel hesitated, the frailness of her body all too evident to him. Michael moved away from the grave, his hand extended in that meaningless gesture of petty pacification.

"Not now," he said, "Let us go back inside. It is cold."

"I am not a child." Max did not speak loudly, but there was a certain force in her voice that even the angels had to reckon with.

Michael swallowed, his throat contracting against his thick iron collar. "Max, listen to me-" he began, but Gabriel wouldn't let him finish.

Bending at the waist, he lowered Max to the ground, the blanket falling around her in a cloud of cornflower blue. He set her on her feet but she stumbled, dropping into the dirt.

Perhaps, Gabriel thought, this would be the moment. Perhaps Max would understand and the understanding itself would consume her, would take from her what it needed until she gave in. And Gabriel wanted to see her give in, wanted to see her weep and wail. Wanted to see her tear at her hair and rend her garments. Wanted to see her lose the last of her destructive restraint, the thing that even now kept her locked away, isolated from her very real grief. From this horrible, horrible tragedy.

Gabriel's own eyes were watery as he watched her, but he held himself painfully aloof, remembering the great damage his last outpouring of emotion had caused. Max had been repulsed when he had kissed her. She had driven him away. And Gabriel would not be driven away now. He stood firm, the immovable, ageless stone once more, although there were tears leaking down his cheeks and it was difficult to breathe. If only he could breathe.

Max was sitting by the cross, one trembling hand reaching out to touch it. Her knuckles were white, her fingers curled into claws. Gabriel saw that her lips were drawn back, her teeth bared, her expression wild and rabid and haunted.

And she was going to scream. She was going to scream and then Gabriel would scream with her. Because she couldn't be alone and he couldn't be alone and their grief, their sorrow, was the only thing that could possibly hold them together.

Scream, they were both going to scream.

But nothing happened. Max clenched her hand into a fist and tucked it back inside the folds of the blanket.

"I want you both to leave," she said in an even, calm voice. "I want you both to leave now."

Gabriel's whole body lurched forward and a fervent denial rose to his lips. But then Max looked up at him ad he saw the hate in her eyes, the misguided, anger that festered inside her. It was a poison and Gabriel knew that it had defeated her.

Michael, however, did not recognize the futility of the moment. He inched closer to Max, his tattooed fingers easing over one of her hunched shoulders.

"Let us take care of you," he said. "Let us help you."

Max blinked, her face hard. "No."

And that was it. He recoiled, lifting his hand from her shoulder and folding it against his chest. The rejection was complete and it clearly stung Michael, he who had so much faith in humanity.

But Gabriel himself wasn't stung by her refusal. He was heartbroken. Nothing, perhaps, had ever been clearer to him than the intent of her dismissal. He felt it inside him, felt the twisted thing reach through his flesh and fill his marrow with a damp, damnable sort of emptiness that he could not shake. It was worse than the grief, Gabriel realized. It was darker and treacherous. It was understanding in its highest form. It was knowledge. It was the apple plucked from the tree.

Gabriel looked away from Max, he looked away towards the horizon and he saw the sun through the clouds. His eyes watered and burned and he began to cry, he began to weep, because he knew, he knew.

She did not want him. She had never wanted him.

Gabriel swallowed and the effort, the attempt to stay his tears was painful. He uttered a small sigh and found his resolve still intact. He stood tall. He stood strong. The immovable stone. The heart unwillingly hardened.

But she did not want him. She did not want him and that was enough.

Michael started to shift his feet, his confusion clear. He glanced at his brother, but Gabriel knew he could give him nothing.

"It is over," he told Michael, even though every fiber of his being cried out against instinct. " We must respect her wishes. Are you coming?"

Michael hesitated. "Not now," he said, still lingering near Max, "but I will join you soon."

Gabriel nodded, turning his back on Max and the grave and the whole deplorable scene. He went back into the house, edging his way down the narrow hall until he came to the bathroom where he had left his armor. Without any care, he threw on his breastplate and pauldrons, fastened his vambraces around his forearms and strapped his greaves to his shins. His mace he found in the garage. Someone had dragged it inside and set it against the old lawn mower. By the time he had finished dressing and gathered himself, Gabriel's reluctance to leave Max had grown to a fever pitch. He was sorely tempted to refuse Max her request for solitude and remain by her side. And yet, he had been sorely tempted by many things before but had never given in.

Never.

Michael was still standing outside with her by the grave when Gabriel emerged from the garage. He had intended to leave without a farewell, but then something inside him broke when he observed her huddled on the ground in that blue blanket. And something perilous made him resort to begging.

"Max," Gabriel said, drawing as near to her as he dared, which was not near, but the wind carried his voice to her anyway. "Please do not make me go."

She stayed silent for a minute and he had reason to hope in her, to trust in the love he knew he felt and the love that she might never return.

But she was beyond him even then. Max kept her eyes on the grave when she spoke, but the same wind carried her voice to him although he wished it hadn't.

"Jack knew," she said. "He knew about his parent because you told him and he was mad at me. Right before my nephew died, he was mad at me and it's your fault."

That was enough Gabriel had what he needed.

Pivoting slightly, he launched himself into the sky, rising into the blue even as the torturous wind tried to pitch him back to earth. And he hadn't gone far, he hadn't gone very far at all, when he heard Max begin to scream.

* * *

**Author's Note: **I know, I know, it's pretty depressing, but I do promise things will get much, much better.

In chapter nineteen, two human women discuss two angels. Max has a change of heart. The next installment is currently in the works and with any luck, should be posted in roughly ten days.

By the way, I probably should mention that I finally finished outlining this story. The final chapter count should be around 25 chapters, so I'd say we have six installments left if I don't do any massive editing in the near future. ^_^

Thanks so much for taking the time to read! If you have a free moment, please review. I really do cherish all feedback. I hope you all have a very pleasant weekend, and to my fellow Americans, happy 4th of July! Take care and be well!


	19. Chapter Nineteen All Smoke & No Mirrors

**Author's Note: **Here we are, another (very) long chapter. I must say, I was a bit daunted while writing this one, especially since it's from the point of view of a character I never, ever thought I'd explore.

As always, I must thank everyone who took the time to read and also, those that reviewed, **saichick, ArmoredSoul, lexicon, ita-chan01 **and **JackOfAllTrades13**. In addition, I would like to thank those readers who added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you all so much! You have no idea how happy your kind words make me. I hope you enjoy.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Nineteen All Smoke and No Mirrors**

Charlie had always liked mornings. Even as a little girl, she had learned to appreciate the quiet, which had been rare in a house with two rowdy older brothers that were notorious for name-calling and pinching arms and general, all-around brattiness that put a younger sister half out of her mind. Mornings had always belonged to Charlie, though. They were slivers of time she had learned to carve out for herself. Moments defined by small comforts like slipping out of bed before anyone else was awake and feeling the cold slats of the hardwood floors under her tiny feet as she tip-toed about the house. Minutes wasted in the kitchen with a bowl of cereal and the tepid sunlight coming through the mint-green curtains her Mama had hung over the windows. Precious seconds she could spend just listening to her heartbeat and hearing the birds chip in the lilac bush outside the kitchen window.

But that had been _before. _Before dad ran out on them. Before a move to New Mexico. Before an unexpected pregnancy at twenty and a dead-end life working as a waitress at a truck stop. Before God had gotten tired of all the bullshit and decided He'd had enough of a little thing called the human race. Before him, before her Robbie, who now lay nuzzled against Charlie's breast.

Charlie had never figured things would turn out the way they had. She never figured that she'd be living on some defunct horse farm in the middle of nowhere nursing her own baby who she loved so much her heart was just about fit to burst. But then again, Charlie had never expected much out of life and perhaps, just perhaps, this was as good as it was going to get.

After all, she had her quiet mornings back, didn't she?

And that was all right. It wasn't perfect, but it certainly was all right.

The dawn had been new and raw when Charlie crept out of the bedroom she and Jeep had been sharing since they came to the horse farm two days ago. Jeep was still sleeping (he'd insisted on taking the floor, old-fashioned gentleman that he was) and Charlie didn't want to wake him even though she knew she had to feed Robbie. Her baby had been fussing when she lifted him from his cradle-an empty kitchen drawer carefully lined with a scavenged pillow and a blanket-and Charlie had carried him into the living room where they both now sat curled up on the loveseat.

Her back was to the large bay windows, but the sunlight felt warm on her neck and Charlie found she could not help but savor the moment, which was rare for its blessing of peace. And peace itself was in short supply these days, considering all that had happened, considering that that poor kid had gotten killed. Considering that they had buried him in the backyard like some family pet.

Charlie's gut squirmed nervously as she sat clutching Robbie to her breast. All was not well in this house, despite the deceptive stillness. Things were bad, in fact. Downright terrible.

Charlie herself didn't have a real strong idea of what was going on. She knew that Michael and Gabriel had told Max that her nephew was dead, although Charlie had made sure she wasn't around for _that _part. Not that she was a coward or anything. Not that she didn't care, no. It was more about respect, a lesson her Mama had taught her when she was still a girl in pigtails. Charlie had learned at a young age that other people's problems were not something to be gawked at like a freak show. She had learned to look the other way when she drove by an accident on the highway. She had learned to keep a respectful distance at wakes, standing in the corner by the flowers while other people stood up by the casket weeping. And she had learned to avoid tragedy, to ignore it if she had to, because her Mama had also taught her not to got bogged down in somebody else's pain. It wasn't healthy and it wasn't any of her damned business.

When she and Jeep had come back from their walk to the stables yesterday afternoon, Gabriel was gone. Michael, on the other hand, was alone with Max in her room, where he stayed for most of the night, only emerging to get a glass of water or another cool towel for his patient's bruised head.

Neither Jeep nor Charlie had questioned the angel much about his doings, although even Charlie couldn't help but conjure up all sorts of horrors in her mind, imagining Max's profound grief. The cop, while a bit of a bitch, cared for that little boy.

Charlie had expected to hear the woman crying night and day, but every time she passed the room there was only silence. And the silence itself, Charlie decided, wasn't all that comforting either. In fact, it made her nervous, set a knot into her stomach that tightened when she thought of Max, who had loved her nephew very much.

Like she loved her son.

Glancing down at Robbie, she saw his seashell pink lips puckered around her nipple, smelled the sweet, soft scent of his hair and heard the tiny sucking noises he made as he nursed.

She thought of Jack, who was lying buried beneath six feet of sand and dirt. Lying buried in a crocheted afghan Charlie had been using as a baby blanket.

Her eyes stung, water beading her lashes although she tried to blink her unnecessary tears away. "I can't imagine," Charlie murmured, looking at her son. "I can't even imagine."

And although she absolutely hated to admit it, although she felt like a horrible, wretched person, she couldn't help but think, better Max than me.

_For there by the grace of God go I_.

Her Mama used to say stuff like that all the time and Charlie took it to heart, especially now, since she thought God might not have a lot of grace to go around.

_That's right_, she told herself. _Better her than me. Better anyone else than me…_

One of the doors down the hallway opened then, and Charlie expected to see a tousle-haired, unshaven Jeep come trudging into the living room. She even got a smile ready for him, because she felt that Jeep needed to see her smile. But it was Michael who rounded the corner, looking subdued with his wings sagging from his shoulder joints and his eyes so tired. Dog-tired.

Charlie uttered a low noise of surprise when she saw him and she quickly moved to cover her exposed breast with Robbie's blanket. Michael politely looked away as she adjusted herself and when she was finished, he moved into the living room, perching himself on the edge of the threadbare sofa.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

"How is she?" Charlie dared to ask at last, breaking the quiet she loved so much.

Michael rubbed a hand over his close-cropped hair, the skin of his cheeks burnished and bronzed from the sun. "I am not certain," he said, taking a deep breath. "She does not speak to me."

"Not at all?" Charlie asked. She shifted Robbie, his warm weight reassuring in her arms.

"A little," Michael said. He chewed on the corner of his mouth. "She is…confused. The concussion has left her bewildered. She is angry. She cries…sometimes, but mostly, she is silent. My presence," he paused to clear his throat, "my presence does not seem to soothe her."

Charlie was stunned when she recognized something of very real hurt in Michael's expression. The angular, well-defined planes of his face were pinched with strain and he looked exhausted sitting there on the ratty couch with his tattooed hands resting limply on his knees.

It almost seemed like a crime, to see such a magnificent creature brought so low, torn from the heights of Heaven to wallow in the filth of the earth.

But Michael had chosen his path freely, hadn't he? He had chosen to help them and he knew what he was doing. Right? Right?

And Charlie couldn't help it. She felt a little worm of doubt crawl into her brain and start gnawing. She tilted her head to the side, letting her curtain of curls fall over her shoulder.

"Michael," she asked plainly. "Why the hell did you bring us here? I know Red Ridge was bad, but-" She broke off, unable to say what she was thinking. Red Ridge had been bad, yes, but here, there was a dead kid planted in the backyard.

"You said we'd find something," Charlie said, trying to judge his empty features. "You said we'd find what we were looking for. You said we'd find a-"

"I don't know," Michael replied suddenly. His eyes were very wide.

"Me neither," Charlie admitted, worry climbing up the back of her throat as she spoke. "But it seems that ever since we got here, things have gone from bad to worse-"

"Don't." Michael shook his head vehemently. "Do not think this was your fault, Charlie. Jack…it was circumstance. It was chance. You are not to-"

"Blame," Charlie finished for him. "I know that. I know it was nobody's fault, but still…do you really think this is the place? Is this really where we're supposed to be?"

It was a question she had been afraid to ask, but once posed, Charlie knew she couldn't take it back. She waited impatiently for Michael to respond and he sure took his sweet time.

For a second, Charlie wondered if he was stalling.

But then he looked at her. "Maybe I was wrong," he said.

That scared Charlie, because she didn't think Michael could ever be wrong. She didn't think he would ever mislead them.

But anything was possible, she supposed. And even angels, in these dark times, were fallible.

They were quiet again, for a while. Charlie looked down at Robbie and ran the edge of her thumb over the smooth space between his temple and eye. The doubt was still settled firmly in her mind, still there, but she ignored it as best she could.

Michael took another deep breath, forcing his lips into an even line. His brow became smooth and his bearing straightened and slowly, he seemed to regain himself.

"Forgive me my desolate spirit," he said in a gentle tone. "I do not mean to seem so worn and abused. My mind is distracted. I only wish that I could have consoled Max or offered her some sustaining comfort, but she will not heed me…nor Gabriel."

Charlie noticed how his eyes crinkled when he spoke the other angel's name and her own stomach flopped over when she heard it. She was heartily glad that Gabriel was gone and she hoped that wherever he was, he would stay there. After all, it was nearly impossible for Charlie to forget what he had done to Bob, to Audrey, and what he had attempted to do to her son, the innocent baby that laid peacefully in her arms.

Instinctively, she gathered Robbie closer, remembering all too well that cold mountaintop when she had stood on the edge of the cliff, realizing that she was ready to give her life for a child she hadn't even wanted.

And Max, she had been ready to give her life for Jack too.

God, it was sad.

"Do you think she'll come out of it?" Charlie asked, voicing a hope she knew wasn't realistic.

Michael's shoulders jerked upwards in a shrug, his lethal feathers making a quiet, ringing noise. "I do not know. In time, maybe. She needs time. All that I could do, all that I could say to her in one night, will not chase away the unbearable sorrow that she feels. Max, perhaps, is wiser than all of us. She wants to be alone with her grief."

Charlie shook her head, her hair falling over her eyes. When she looked at Michael, it was through a veil of sun-touched gold. "Is that why Gabriel left?" she asked, not sure why she should even care.

Silence, but the stillness of the house soon gave way to a multitude of tiny sounds. Glass panes rattling in windows. Old wooden beams settling with groaning creaks. The silken noise of little Robbie breathing softly against her breast.

Michael stared at the ugly shag carpeting. "Yes," he said at length. "That is why Gabriel left."

Robbie finished nursing and Charlie gently pulled him away from her breast, dropping her shirt over her chest once more. Carefully, she laid the baby against her shoulder, enjoying all the small movements of his body, his squirming legs and wandering hands, and his heavy head, which rested near her neck.

Michael was watching them both, his expression thoughtful. "Woman," he said, his lips parting as they fell into a smile.

"Huh?" Charlie raised her eyebrows.

"I have something to ask of you, Charlie," the angel said and his voice was filled with urgency, the kind that set her teeth on edge.

Not liking his tone one bit, Charlie's muscles tightened. "You've been asking an awful lot lately."

"I know," Michael's admitted, but that didn't seem to stop. "Charlie," he said, "will you go see Max?"

"What? Why?" Her mouth dropped open so quickly her jaw ached. "You just said that she needed to be alone."

"But she also needs you."

"Me?"

"Another human. A woman. I cannot help her. Perhaps you can."

"_Me_?" Charlie repeated blankly. She didn't really like where this was going. It went against every solid life lesson her Mama had taught her, every creed that she had shaped her life by. "She doesn't know me from a hole in the wall. What the hell can I do? I'm just a-"

"Just a waitress?" Michael supplied. He was smiling in earnest now.

Charlie exhaled slowly, feeling all the fight go out of her. She knew this argument wouldn't be an easy one and the angel could talk circles around her. She, after all, didn't even have her GED. "Michael," she muttered tersely, relying on emotion instead of logic to get her point across. "I don't even know what to say to her."

"I thought I did, and yet, she will have nothing to do with me."

"Shit," Charlie bit her lip, transferring Robbie from her shoulder to her lap. But as she tried to move him, Michael stretched out his hands, taking her baby from her and into his own arms.

Without thinking, Charlie started to protest, all the keen ferocity of her maternal protectiveness springing to life within her as she tried to snatch her baby away from the angel.

But Michael was cradling Robbie against his chest, his body losing all of its sleek strength and solemn dignity as he smiled at the infant, as he smiled and smiled and smiled.

And for some reason, Charlie couldn't help but remember the funeral they'd held for Jack the previous morning, when Gabriel had carried the boy's body out of the tack shed and laid him gently, oh so gently, in the grave.

"You don't know what you're asking of me," Charlie mumbled. She was honestly terrified to get up and walk right into Max's room. What she might find there, she felt, could be horrible. And Mama had warned her about other people's pain, had told her that it was best not get involved and stay away, stay as far away as she could from tragedy. It was like quicksand. So easy to kept trapped in. So easy to get pulled under.

Michael kept his eyes on Robbie, although she thought she saw his grin fade a little. "Charlie, please. I would not ask this lightly" he said. There was not a note of begging in his voice, but something else, a strong undercurrent that spoke of desperation and frustration and fear, yes, maybe a little bit of fear.

And despite it all, despite the fact that she didn't know Max and she couldn't think of what to say to a woman who had lost a child, Charlie found herself giving in. Because there was nothing else to do, really, when the angels came calling. There was nothing she could do at all.

"All right," she said, pushing herself off the loveseat and onto her feet. "But I really don't want to do this."

"I know."

"And I'm not going to be much help."

"You will be."

"Watch Robbie for me, will you?"

It was very nearly ridiculous, Charlie realized, asking an angel to baby-sit her kid. But Michael was smiling again, his expression light and youthful and bordering on boyish.

"Take these," he said, fishing a bottle out of his pants pocket as Charlie passed by him. "They were the only thing I could find in the cabinet in the bathroom. They may help her with the pain."

Charlie took the bottle from him and looked at it, the pills rattling around inside as she turned the plastic container over in her palm. "Aspirin?" she questioned skeptically.

Michael shook his head. "It is worth a try, isn't it? It is always worth a try."

"Yeah," Charlie replied vaguely. She had the distinct feeling that he wasn't talking about the aspirin.

She turned to go.

"Charlie!"

She was in the kitchen when he called to her, and she stopped, pivoting on her bare heels to face him again, the soles of her feet making a squeaky sound on the sticky linoleum floor.

And then she saw him, really saw him, the archangel, St. Michael, the General of the all the armies of Heaven. He was sitting on the ratty couch, holding her baby in his arms.

_Her_ baby.

Michael looked up at Charlie and his smile was radiant. "Have faith," he told her.

And Charlie did.

* * *

It was a different story, of course, when she was standing outside Max's bedroom door, trying to work up the courage to knock. The air in the hallway was stale and Charlie's throat was tight, as though she had morning sickness all over again. She tugged at the collar of her sweater, which had suddenly become restricting, and cracked her knuckles, a bad habit she had tried to break but could never quite get rid of.

_This is stupid_, Charlie thought, the fingers of her left hand curled so tightly around the aspirin bottle she thought the lid would pop off and the pills would go flying all over the place. _She's just a woman and it's just death._

Just death.

But oh, trying to trivialize it somehow made everything ten times worse. Made it a hundred, million times worse.

It was hard to brush something like this off, even though she had tried to. It was hard to rationalize and ignore. It was hard to look away. And although Charlie hated to admit it, this was one car wreck she couldn't just drive by without rubbernecking. This was one tragedy she couldn't avoid, because it involved her too.

She'd been sitting in the pick-up, after all, when Jack had gotten shot.

Charlie sighed, annoyed at her hesitance. What a waste she was, dawdling in this stuffy hall like a scared kid. How could she possibly be strong and stand on her own two feet if she shied away from everything that made her uncomfortable? How was she going to take care of Robbie if she couldn't even make herself walk into a room and talk to a stranger? That did it. The threat of failure, of not doing all that she could possibly do for her son. It was a powerful incentive. A deeply imbedded instinct.

Charlie stopped cracking her knuckles. She stopped swallowing convulsively and she stopped being a coward. She stopped being selfish.

Raising her hand, she knocked loudly on the door, perhaps a bit too loudly, considering Max had one hell of a concussion.

"Uh, hey!" She turned her head to the side, her ears straining, trying to catch the faintest sound, the smallest sign of life. "Hey Max! It's just me. Can I come in for sec?" A beat of silence passed. Nobody answered. Charlie almost groaned.

God, this was almost like trying to make an important phone call and waiting through all the rings just to get an answering machine. She shifted her weight, the denim of her jeans making a rough, rustling sound as her knees rubbed together.

"All right, well, I'm just gonna come in," she announced, pushing against the door with a hand that was not as steady as she wished it would be. The lock clicked open and all of a sudden, Charlie found herself standing inside the bedroom.

And it wasn't that bad, actually.

The light was dim, because the curtains were only half-open and the electricity was still out. There were a few discarded towels lying on the carpeted floor, the brown and green and orange terrycloth looking like dried autumn leaves against a background of beige. The water glass on the nightstand was nearly full and someone, probably Michael, had placed a chair right next to the bed. Charlie saw that the otherwise smooth wooden back had been freshly gouged and chipped, no doubt from the careless fluttering of some razor-sharp feathers.

Razor-sharp feathers, like the ones that had gutted Bob…

She decided she didn't feel like sitting just then.

"Hey."

Charlie jumped, realizing, all along, that she had been ignoring (perhaps unintentionally, perhaps not) the figure on the bed. Max, however, was looking directly at her.

The woman was pale, her brow dappled with bruises. The gash across her temple looked a little sweaty and Charlie immediately thought of infection. It was what had killed many of the refugees back at Red Ridge National Park. A veritable pestilence. A subtle, nameless plague.

But otherwise, Charlie thought Max seemed well…considering. She was huddled against a few pillows that had been propped up on the cheap, white-wood headboard and her head was resting on a dingy bolster. The arm with the sling lay across her lap.

"Hey," she repeated, lifting her head slightly. "Hey…I forgot your name again. Sorry." She frowned, the skin on her lips dry and chapped.

And somehow, Charlie started to smile. "It's Charlie," she said.

"Right, Charlie," Max shifted, sitting more upright as she observed her guest. " For some reason I thought it was Carly. What is it with us girls and our androgynous names, huh? Ugh…dammit." She broke off, wincing as she tried to raise her wounded arm from her lap.

"Do you need any help?" Charlie asked, moving forward. Necessity effectively banished some of her worrisome trepidation. "Is there something I can do?"

"No, not really," Max muttered through a grimace.

Charlie was stunned to see how much command she had over herself. For some reason, she had expected to find a woman who had completely lost it, a zombie. Michael had made it seem as though Max was inconsolable, but to Charlie, she seemed just fine.

And maybe that's where the true danger lay.

"I could…I could," Max mumbled, struggling to adjust herself on the too soft pillows. "I could really go for some morphine, though. Or a Vicodin." Her voice was strung with false hope. "Something like that would be nice, you know?"

Charlie remembered the bottle of aspirin in her hand. "I'm fresh out," she said, her face alive with sympathy. "Michael only managed to rustle up some aspirin. And from the looks of it," she paused, reading the label, "it expired five years ago."

"Gotta be fucking kidding me," Max said. She ran her uninjured hand over her face. "Unbelievable."

"Sorry," Charlie replied. She tried to stuff the aspirin into her pants pocket, but found something else in there instead. There was a pack of cigarettes and a lighter in her pocket and as Charlie ran her fingertips over the top of the cellophane wrapper, her skin prickled.

Nicotine withdrawal was a bitch, a real bitch, And even the apocalypse couldn't put a stop to the overwhelming cravings and the jitteriness and the headaches and the nausea and the constant, cold sweats. Charlie hadn't had a cigarette in roughly two weeks and although Robbie had been a distraction, her body still felt like it had taken the worst beating. Having a baby and quitting smoking cold turkey all in one day was enough to make any woman a little testy.

Now she could feel the slight weight of the forgotten pack sitting in her pocket. Her lips were pursed and her hands just itched to pull one smoke out and light it.

But she shouldn't…she shouldn't really, she really, really shouldn't…ah hell.

Charlie looked at Max. "Want a smoke?" she asked.

Max blinked her dull eyes, her face swollen and puffy. "You have cigarettes?"

"Yeah." Charlie pulled the pack and the lighter out of her pocket, tossing the useless aspirin aside on the nightstand where it rolled around next to the water glass. She sat in the chair by the bed. "Do you smoke?"

"No," Max said, but that didn't stop her for reaching for the cigarette Charlie offered her.

They both lit up, Charlie snapping the lighter closed with an expert flick of her wrist. For a moment, she puffed contentedly, savoring the lush rings of smoke that rose in wreaths around her head and burned the back of her throat whenever she inhaled.

Max tried to take a puff at her smoke, but she coughed as soon as the cigarette touched her lips.

Charlie watched her out of the corner of her eye. For some reason, she didn't have the heart to tell her that she was holding her cigarette wrong, with the back of her hand facing her mouth instead of the other way around.

"You know, I think it's funny," Max sniffed, tapping some ash onto the floor. "My sister used to smoke. Like a chimney."

"Sorry," Charlie said with a shrug, "but I don't get what's so funny about that."

Max smiled a little, but the expression was hollow, the grin of a skull. "It's funny if you knew my sister. She was…she was one of those health nuts, you know? She did Pilates and bought all her food from the organic market and she wouldn't let soda or candy into her house and she only drank red wine for her heart. And yet she smoked. She tried to hide it, but I'd always catch her. I'd…I'd pull up to her apartment building and see her standing outside with the cigarette hanging out of her mouth. She thought she was so perfect, you know. But she wasn't."

Charlie looked at the other women fully now, drawn by the underlying hostility in her voice. It was very powerful, her anger. Some kind of pent up frustration. And Max was sitting all bundled up by the white headboard, like a cat ready to spring into action after a stray mouse.

Charlie felt real sorry for her.

"Yeah, well," she muttered, turning her pack of cigarettes over and over on her thigh, "I didn't have any sisters, just two brothers. Cain and Abel."

Max snorted. "Really?"

"Nah." It felt almost obscene to Charlie to be joking now, at a time like this. But Max didn't seem offended. She didn't even seem wholly alive.

"What happened to them?" the woman croaked. She had tried to take another drag of her cigarette but only started hacking away.

Charlie puffed happily on her smoke. "Mason and Andrew, but don't ask me nothing about them cause I haven't seen them in at least five years. Mason turned out all right, went up to Montana to work on a cattle ranch. He always liked animals. And Andrew, he was in prison, last I checked. God knows where either of them are now, though."

Even as she spoke, Charlie began to feel bothered. It was true, she supposed. She couldn't even begin to guess what had happened to her brothers after the apocalypse. In all likelihood, they were probably dead. Both of them. Gone.

Strange, it had never upset her before when she thought she'd never see them again, what with Mason living the life under the blue Montana skies and Andrew doing a dozen years for a litany of crimes Charlie didn't care to remember. But now she was sad, thinking that her family might never come home again.

Death, she thought, was too unforgiving. And instinctively, she leaned forward, glancing out the window to see the roof of the tack shed. Yeah, you didn't get any more unforgiving than that.

"Family's are tricky," Max said in a voice that was straining to be sympathetic, but only sounded empty.

Charlie smiled at her anyway. "They are."

"And what about that guy you're with? Jeep? Is he the father of your kid?"

"Nope." Grey ash fell from the tip of Charlie's cigarette, burning her knuckles because she had forgotten to knock it off. "But he might as well be."

Max nodded in response and Charlie was relieved when her companion didn't ask her what she meant.

"Must be nice," Max rasped, "To have someone like that in your life."

"Yeah," Charlie replied without really thinking. But her stomach dropped when she looked over and saw Max discreetly wiping a tear from her cheek.

And God, the woman almost looked ashamed.

"Sorry," Max said. She tried to cover her trembling lips behind her cigarette, but Charlie could see all of her sorrow. It was a great canvas of emotion, ever-changing, impermanent, fluid. And pain itself was so hard to decipher. It was the perfect pantomime, the changeling, and Charlie couldn't really tell where Max's regret stopped and her true grief began.

"You don't have to apologize," she said, hoping that she sounded calm, while in reality, her heart was fluttering against her ribcage like a trapped hummingbird. "It's all right to…you know, it's all right to get upset."

Max sniffed, her eyes narrow slits as she clutched her cigarette and tried to take another drag. But the cinders had already burned down to the filter and nothing but ash remained.

Ashes and dust.

Gently, Charlie leaned forward and took the burnt out cigarette from her, dropping it into the glass where it sizzled for a moment and then slowly started to turn the water brackish.

Max nodded her thanks, although her neck seemed stiff and she could only jerk her chin a little. Pain and exhaustion pulled at her already thin cheeks, making her look impossibly drawn. "I just remembered something," she said. "When I was in college, I took this religion class, Theology of Death and Dying. Yeah, I know, pretty damn appropriate. The professor was a priest and he had us read this book by some guy, some writer. It was all about losing someone you loved. _A Grief Observed_, that's what it was called. I don't know, I think the author lost his wife to cancer or something, but anyway, I remember he said how embarrassed people were around him after the death. How they acted all skittish, because they were ashamed of his grief. Is it like that for you now, Charlie? Are you embarrassed for me?"

More ash fell from the end of Charlie's cigarette, singing her fingertips. Feeling disgusted with herself, she dumped the whole thing in the water glass and sat back in her chair, enveloped by serpentine tendrils of pale, poisonous smoke.

And she thought that her heart might be breaking for this woman. This poor woman who was really pathetic, who thought so little of herself and her grief because she only cared about saving face, about avoiding embarrassment.

_No wonder Michael couldn't relate_, Charlie realized. The angel thought too highly of humans. He had too much hope and he could not possibly perceive the depths of man's self-destruction.

Charlie could, though.

"I'm not embarrassed," she said firmly. For some reason, she wanted to slide over onto the bed and put her arm around Max, but common sense told her to keep her distance. "You shouldn't be embarrassed either. You're supposed to be devastated. It's natural, what you're feeling right now…all the craziness, the sadness, let it run wild."

"But what am I supposed to do?" Max asked. She had the look of a child about her, her gaze wide and wandering and lost. "Am I supposed to throw myself on the floor and have a screaming tantrum? Am I supposed to go flat out nuts? Am I supposed to say, _why God, why_, when we both know there is no why? There just…there just _is_."

Charlie's body tensed. Her skin was crawling, pulling tight on her bones as if it was shrinking. She was angry, angry at Max who could sit there with her cool dignity and trembling lips and try to act all rational, try to play the part of the philosopher when there was a twelve-year old boy buried outside by the tack shed.

But then it hit her, smack, square in the chest. Charlie felt all the air leave her lungs, expelling the last of the smoke in a great rush of a sigh. It was looking her straight in the face, staring her down and she had been blind to it.

Denial. Max was in denial.

And there was absolutely nothing to be done about it, Charlie knew. Michael could stay with Max all night and hold her and fill her human ears with the wisdom of Heaven and nothing would change. Charlie could sit there with her and chat and share a smoke and Max still wouldn't be moved.

None of them, not one of them, could do anything, Charlie realized. None of them, except for…

"Gabriel," there was a noticeable tremor in Max's voice when she spoke the angel's name.

"Yeah," Charlie said. She watched as the sodden cinders began to float down to the bottom of the glass, dark snowflakes in a foggy globe. A faint feeling of unease had crept into her gut and she chewed on her thumbnail. There was something at work here that Charlie didn't exactly understand, although she had, in her quiet moments, wondered just how the vicious Gabriel had ended up in a place like this, with people like Max and Jack. How he had become part of a family of humans. How he had cried at the graveside of the little boy.

Things just didn't add up for Charlie and as she glanced at Max, as she saw the very real tears in the woman's eyes, she knew she wasn't the only one left out in the dark.

And Charlie decided to ask, because there was nothing else she could do.

"Why Gabriel?" she questioned, trying her best to keep the judgment from her voice even though it filled every vein and bone and breath in her body. She wanted to know why, why Max wouldn't mourn for her dead nephew, but would openly weep for Gabriel. Why she sat there now all twisted and broken and searching for something that was beyond cold reality.

When Max didn't answer her right away, Charlie surrendered what remained of the chilly distance between them and settled herself on the bed next to the woman. Max's uninjured hand, the one she had used to hold the cigarette, was lying limp on the blue coverlets. Charlie didn't think, but slipped her fingers into Max's and squeezed.

"You know," she said, "I didn't much like Michael when he first showed up at Paradise Falls. He was, well, he was pretty damn scary, what with all those crazy tattoos and a police car full of guns and his eyes-"

"It's in the eyes," Max said numbly. She let Charlie clasp her hand, although she didn't squeeze back. "It's in their eyes."

"Yeah," Charlie said, still tasting the last of the tobacco on her lips. "But you can't help being drawn to them. I guess I have to admit, Michael still scares me sometimes, but having him around, it almost feels like a blessing."

"A blessing?" Max asked, the hard skepticism ringing clear in her tone.

Charlie shrugged. "It feels like, it feels like someone's watching over me, protecting me. I feel safe. I feel-"

"Loved?" Max's hand finally tightened around hers. "Do you feel loved?"

Charlie stared at her.

The woman's eyes were red and although her few scant tears had already dried, it was easy for Charlie to see her grief. It was there, right on the surface.

Charlie frowned. The metaphor was inevitable. Max's grief was like a scar. A deep, deep scar.

Suddenly, the woman was much closer to her. Max had her shoulder pressed to Charlie's and without thinking, Charlie embraced her.

_Sister_, she thought, the word coming to her mind and settling there. It was a plain acknowledgement. An understanding that the only thing that could ever tie them together was their humanity, their frailty, their _strength._

_Sister_, Charlie's mind echoed. Yes, they were almost like sisters in that moment.

"I'm confused," Max uttered, her breath hot on Charlie's neck as she leaned into her. "I'm so confused."

"It's all right," Charlie said and she truly meant it. "I understand."

"No, you don't.

"Yeah, I do."

"This isn't about Jack," Max said. She started to pull away, dragging herself out of the circle of Charlie's arms until she was huddled against the chintzy headboard again. "This is about Gabriel."

_Gabriel_. Charlie shut her eyes for an instant. It always seemed to come back to Gabriel.

When Charlie opened her eyes, she say that Max had turned her head away. There was, however, a single tear on her cheek. One single tear.

"I think Gabriel is in love with me," Max said and her voice, though weak, carried with it a sort of stoic reverence. "What do I do if I'm in love with him?"

And for that, Charlie had no answer. Absolutely no answer at all.

She opened her mouth, but her tongue was numb and her jaw heavy and only meaningless words rolled around in her mouth. But Max was looking to her, looking for help.

_Sister._

Charlie could give her nothing.

And Max knew it.

"You're embarrassed now, aren't you?" she said with a harsh grimace, plagued by her own misplaced sense of defiance and detachment. "Because it's sick…it really is pretty sick, considering my nephew is dead and all I can do is sit here and think about Gabriel. Now _that's_ disgusting. Right, Charlie? Come on, why won't you say anything?"

The challenge provoked Charlie, but she didn't rise to it. Scooting away from Max, she found herself perched on the edge of the chair again. Her pack of cigarettes had fallen to the floor and she stepped on them, crushing the last of her smokes with her bare heel. "Hey," Charlie said. "Michael said you were confused. And that's what this is…just…just try to relax, okay?"

"I'm not confused!" Max shouted. She smacked her uninjured hand down on the bed, her palm flat against the coverlets. "Maybe I'm the only one who's willing to be honest here. To tell it like it is. But the truth is awful, isn't it? It sucks. Because you want to know something? When I was lying there on the ground next to my squad car, when I was hurt and couldn't get up and thought I was probably going to die, I wasn't thinking about Jack. I was thinking about Gabriel." She broke off suddenly, as though something had crawled up inside her and stolen her voice, stolen the last strains of her petulant anger.

Charlie was half-sitting, half-standing by the chair now, her hand braced against the back. And she could feel all the little chips in the wood. All the little gouges and tiny holes.

_Damaged_, she thought vaguely. _It's badly damaged._

"You know, you know," Max chanted dumbly. She seemed to be looking inside herself and whatever she saw didn't please her, because her face screwed up, her nose wrinkling in the perfect picture of disgust. "I must be sick. I must be really, really sick."

Max looked her and Charlie knew she was supposed to say something. Say something…but what?

It was then that Robbie started to cry. Started to fuss and whine somewhere off in the living room. Charlie felt relief swamp her.

_Saved by the bell_.

"I gotta go," she said, rushing out the bedroom door and down the hall into the living room, where Michael still sat on the sofa, rocking a fretting Robbie in his arms.

"What happened?" the angel asked, distracted by the squalling infant.

"Nothing," Charlie replied. She took Robbie from Michael. And as she held him close, as she pressed his sweet, soft body to hers, she couldn't help but feel, for all the world, that she had failed.

* * *

**Author's Note: **For the record, Michael is a lot more on the ball than he appears in this chapter. He knew _exactly_ what he was doing when he sent Charlie in to see Max, haha.

In chapter twenty, Gabriel reunites with Max and shares several secrets with her. Max makes a decision regarding her life on the farm. And at last, I'm happy to report we will finally have a little bit of romance in chapter twenty. Also, just so you know, my next update might be slightly delayed (only by a day or two) due to a short vacation I'm taking this weekend for my birthday. Even though I truly love writing this story, I need a few days to kick up my heels on the beach and relax. ;)

Thanks so very much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. I really appreciate any and all feedback I receive for this story and new reviews always make me insanely happy. I hope you all have an awesome weekend! Take care and be well!

_*A Grief Observed_, referenced in this chapter, was written by C.S. Lewis. Lewis, a Christian apologist, wrote the book after the death of his wife, Joy Gresham, as an exploration of his own personal bereavement.


	20. Chapter Twenty Virginia Woolf

**Author's Note: **Sorry this update took so long, guys. Not only did I go away on vacation for a while last week, but I also had a rather nasty final exam to deal with. However, I'm happy to report that my summer schedule has cleared up nicely and I should have plenty of time to get new chapters posted quickly. ^_^

As usual, I'd like to start off by thanking everyone who read the last chapter and those that took the time to review, **saichick, Ana Lilly, Lexicon, Fyrefly **and **ArmoredSoul. **I'd also like to thank everyone who added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Once again, I truly appreciate all the kind feedback and thoughtful support I've received from my readers. Your continued encouragement has made me so happy. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty Virginia Woolf**

Then I heard your heart beating,

You were in the darkness too

So I stayed in the darkness with you.

_- "Cosmic Love" by Florence and the Machine  
_

Max preferred being alone. She had spent most of her adult life on her own, rarely venturing outside the confines of her small circle of family, friends and acquaintances. She never liked meeting new people and for the most part, she enjoyed living by herself in her tiny, one bedroom apartment back in L.A.. Independence wasn't something she necessarily craved, but she was content to have it, content to wake up every morning and sit at her kitchen table with a cup of coffee and not say anything to anyone at all. Content to just be there in the world with herself and her own thoughts. Content with what she had, a few friends, her family, her job. Content, but not really happy.

Not really happy at all.

Max was alone again now, though. She sat in her grandmother's old bedroom with her furniture that was straight out of the eighties, and the carpet that had bloodstains on it from when Michael had pulled the bullet out of her arm, and a window that overlooked a child's grave.

Max was alone with herself and she wasn't sure if she liked it, because there had been a couple of days when she was happy. When she still had Jack and Gabriel was hanging around. Things had been nice then, she realized. Not perfect, but nice. And life was like that song, like that song she half-remembered but always seemed to be playing on the radio.

_Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got till it's gone…*_

"Fucking understatement of the century," Max muttered, using sarcasm to blanket the tears that tried to creep into her voice. It was easy to be flippant, to press her lips together until her jaw ached and the muscles in her neck were in agony from holding back her sobs.

Max had never really liked to cry and she didn't want to start now.

Crying wouldn't undo what had been done. Crying wouldn't bring her nephew back.

Jack was dead. She was to blame. There was no million dollar question. No mystery. The answer was simple.

And now she was alone.

The day was gone already, another day she had spent in bed, lost to a sort of altered consciousness that was more than likely the result of her concussion. It was hard for Max to separate minutes from hours, to understand time as it was meant to be understood. She wasn't exactly sure how she had ended up all alone in that bedroom, with the perfect darkness of night falling over the house in dreary folds. She knew that Charlie had spent some of the morning with her. The girl was sweet and she had tried her best to talk some sense into Max.

And although she appreciated the effort, Max wasn't really into receiving advice, or giving it, for that matter. She remembered all the times her sister had chided her over the years, saying things like, "Max, you really shouldn't eat so much junk" or "Max, why don't you try to get off the graveyard shift, it isn't good for your health to be up all night" and the ever popular "Max, it's still not too late for you to meet someone." But whenever Laurie had started preaching about something, Max had always wanted to tell her to shut the hell up and mind her own business. It was enough. It was more than enough and Max knew she could take care of herself.

Because she could take care of herself, right?

Either way, she hadn't paid much mind to what Charlie had said, because although the girl was good-intentioned, she still seemed a little naïve. There was too much of the wide-eyed idiot about her for Max to trust her wisdom fully, even though she had to admit that some of things Charlie had mentioned had stuck with her, especially that bit about Gabriel.

_Why Gabriel?_ she had asked.

Max couldn't help it. The questioned renewed itself in her mind constantly. _Why Gabriel_? she thought over and over again. _Why him?_

Because she loved him.

Oh God.

Sitting there in the still, all too silent darkness, Max felt the sudden urge to move. She had her legs tucked underneath her and she unwound them, her back pressed against the headboard. She held her head up even though the pain was excruciating and she couldn't really see straight. But she knew she had to get out of the house. Her injured wrist ached as she tried to ease herself to the side of the bed, reminding Max that there had recently been a bullet lodged in her flesh. She looked at the fresh bandage wrapped around her arm. It was something Michael insisted on doing whenever her came into her room, which was much too often for her liking, although at least he had the decency to leave her alone that night. She wondered if he'd been hurt when she slapped him.

Probably not. It seemed to take a hell of a lot to hurt an angel.

And yet, Gabriel had started to cry when they stood by Jack's grave. He had started to cry.

Max stiffened. She didn't want to think about that. It made her sick.

Reaching over towards the nightstand, she found the bottle of aspirin Charlie had left for her. It took her a few minutes to pop the cap off using only one hand, but when she finally did, she tapped the pills out onto her palm and took two without any water, because her glass still had cigarette butts floating in it.

The pills felt like an awful lump in her throat as she swallowed them. Max groaned, trying to bend at the waist as she searched for her shoes near the bed. She couldn't find any and even though she didn't have socks on, she knew she wasn't going to spend the whole night inside.

Dragging herself up, using the headboard for support, she got to her feet. The dizziness was worse whenever she moved. Max pulled her lips back, grimacing as she felt her gorge rise. For a minute, she thought she might throw up again. But the feeling passed and after a few shaky, stumbling steps, she forced herself through the door and out into the hall.

Max had to lean on the walls to make it through the house, her left shoulder pressed against the plaster. The electricity was still out and it was hard to see, the dark falling around her shoulders with such intensity that she got chills. It was like being a kid again, getting up out of bed in the middle of the night and tip-toeing down the hall with the threat of ghosts and bogeymen inching along behind her. And even though Max was thirty-six years old and a (former) cop, she didn't like the dark. Didn't like it one bit.

Bad things happened in the dark.

But then she remembered that it had been sunny when she and Jack had pulled up to that blockade on the road. It had been high noon when her nephew had gotten a bullet in his head.

Max doubled over, her whole body seeming to reject what was, in fact, reality. She tripped, hands outstretched, and crashed into the door that led out to the garage. Her knees buckled and she gripped the jamb, feeling her nails scrape against the plaster until the flesh on her arms was covered in goosebumps.

And as she stood there, as she half-knelt in the hall, trying to catch her breath, Max knew that she didn't want to be alone. She didn't want to be alone like this.

"Someone," she muttered, her words tending towards a sob, "someone has to help me."

_Gabriel._

Where was he now anyway? Was he in Heaven? Was he with Jack?

Max tried to shake her head, but her brain only bounced around her skull, rattling what remained of her coherency. Fortunately for her, however, the aspirin was starting to kick in. She began to feel that soupy, sleepy sort of warmth rise up through her limbs, giving her a false sense of strength that carried her through the door out into the garage. But that strength nearly vanished when she saw the pick-up truck. It sat nestled next to the old lawn mower, looking, for all the world, like some great, slumbering dragon.

Some amount of morbidity darkened her thoughts and Max wondered if there was still a bloodstain in the bed from when Jack had, from when he had…

Max couldn't even form the words in her mind. She laughed at that, because it wasterrible and it was a tragedy. And she found herself crying while she laughed, the tears mingling eagerly with her hiccupping, nervous chuckles.

But Max hated to cry. She _hated_ to cry. Clamping her jaw shut, she pushed the burning ball of sobs and the wet sloppy tears back down into her stomach, back where they couldn't hurt her so that she could stand there and be stoic.

She liked to be stoic. It made her feel strong. Powerful.

Gabriel hadn't been stoic, though. He hadn't been stoic when she told him to leave and he had begged to stay.

Why had he listened to her? _Why?_

_Whatever. _

Max edged her way around the truck. It took more effort than she cared to admit to open the garage door. When it rolled back on the tracks with a loud squealing sound, she thought Charlie and Jeep would wake up and come running out to stop her. Or maybe Michael would appear again from out of nowhere like he always did, and carry her back to bed because he thought, for some reason, that she needed him. When no one came, however, Max began to believe that she really was alone.

And a void opened in her heart. A void that had been there all along but she only realized it now.

Max rolled her aching shoulders, the small movement causing pain to flood her injured arm. Aspirin could only do so much and the wound to her wrist was a bitch. Without thinking, Max pulled at the gauze, her fingertips touching the sore spot where she could feel the rigid, blood-stiffened stitches and split skin.

It hurt. God, it hurt. But it also reminded her that she was alive, although she wasn't sure she wanted to be.

It was painful, too, when she stepped out onto the driveway with her bare feet. The tiny pebbles that seemed so insignificant when she stomped over them in her shoes were jagged now. Her feet arched as she staggered around to the back of the house and sand stuck to her skin. She cursed under her breath.

It seemed to take forever to get to the relative comfort of the picnic bench at the back of the house, though the term comfort was rather questionable in and of itself. There could be no comfort, no calm when Max saw the grave and knew what lay underneath that mound of dirt. Sitting on the bench, her body shaking as the cold rose up against her with such vengeful fury, Max wondered if this was the end. There had been plenty of times in her life when bad things, horrible, terrible, tragic things had happened, and she thought she'd never feel normal again.

Like when she was eleven years old and in grammar school. There came an afternoon when her teachers and the principal had herded her entire class into the auditorium to tell them that their 5th grade teacher, a kind, funny guy who had grey hair and was balding even though he was only twenty-eight, had died of a massive heart attack.

Max didn't think she'd be normal after that, when she saw the kids around her crying and knew that her 5th grade teacher's wife was six months pregnant with their first kid. She didn't think she'd ever be normal again.

Then there had been that other time, when she was four years on the police force and one of the guys from her Academy class, a guy who was kind of a jerk but Max had a crush on anyway, was killed in the line of duty by a drunk driver. When she stood outside the church in her dress uniform and saluted and heard the bagpipes playing Amazing Grace as the coffin rolled by, she didn't think she'd ever, ever be normal again.

And then there had been that other time. That other time when she was thirty and had just gotten a pay raise and used the money to buy herself a nice laptop. She'd just switched on the computer, had just turned it on and was sitting on her living room couch when her mom called her all the way from the family home in New York. The news was bad. Fourth stage breast cancer. She lived for about seventeen months.

Max never thought she'd be normal again after that.

But there was also something else, she realized. Something else that had happened a day or so ago, when she had stood in the desert with an angel, with her Gabriel and he had kissed her. An angel had kissed her.

And Max _knew _that she'd never be normal again after that. Never, never.

She started to cry.

"Gabriel," she called, even as the tears streamed down her face and she saw the grave and understood, with the most perfect type of understanding, that she couldn't ignore that void inside her anymore. "Gabriel," she called.

He heard her. And he came.

* * *

He came, the splendor of Heaven lighting his way through the dark, his body bathed in the light of the celestial cosmos, which made all the world shrink and shiver. The stars, the brilliance of the distant, unnamed galaxies were in his eyes and etched into the hard, unforgiving planes of his face, reflected in the ebony tips of his feathers. And in seeing him, Gabriel the archangel, Max thought of a story she had once heard about Saul in the desert. About the light of the Lord, which was blinding. But she did not look away, not even when her eyes began to burn. She did not look away.

Gabriel alighted before her. His booted feet settled on the soil of the earth, which had once been pure but was now tainted by the inherent wickedness of man. The light around him fell away and the dark returned and he looked much as he always had to Max, except his face was sad.

The wind blew and Max's bare feet ached. She curled her legs beneath her on the bench in a futile attempt to keep warm. "You know," she said, offering Gabriel an appraising glance, "I think I liked you much better when you were bleeding to death in that gully with dirt smeared on your skin and your stomach half ripped open."

Gabriel did not move, but something shifted in his expression, altering his sorrow until he only seemed bemused, if a creature such as him could ever be called bemused. "Woman," he began, but Max wasn't having any of it.

"Why don't you cut the crap," she said, gesturing with her good hand at his stately carriage and the way he held his shoulders, as if the weight of the world rested on them, "why don't you cut the crap and just come sit down with me, all right?"

Gabriel's straight shoulders sagged. The joints in his wings loosened and he seemed to surrender the last of his splendor in favor of the familiarity they once shared. The mark of Heaven left him and he became a being of flesh and bone and blood.

And Max found that she liked him that way. She liked to think that he was the same as her.

Moving stiffly, Gabriel approached the picnic bench and tried to sit beside her. But the seat had been pushed too close to the back of the house and he couldn't fit his wings behind him. After a moment of uncertain maneuvering, he finally dragged one end of the bench away from the wall until he had enough room to squeeze his bulky body next to hers.

Max felt the soft, broadsides of his feathers brush against her arm as he sat. The feeling was wonderful.

Silence reigned over them for many a long minute and the time was haunted by the sight of that ugly grave, which lay close by, so very close by. With the moon high in the sky, the cross cast of muted blue shadow on the silver ground. The scene was like something out of a painting, Max decided. Moody and desolate and unreal.

She almost hoped that none of this was real, but then she thought of Gabriel's feathers touching her flesh and she realized how much she needed that moment. With some measure of guilt, she found herself leaning closer to him, until her forearm pressed against his warm flank.

Gabriel didn't move, but allowed her the small indecency.

After a while, the silence grew heavy and Max realized that the burden of conversation lay with her, because she had called him in the first place.

She looked at the grave and bit her lip.

"Remember that literature class I told you I took in college?" she asked at length, looking up at Gabriel with all the hope of a child who wishes to please, but cannot find the means to do so. "Remember, the one where I read Shakespeare and Beckett and all those other plays?"

Gabriel nodded.

Max wasn't exactly encouraged, but she continued on anyway.

"I was thinking about this other play I read," she said. "It was near the end of the semester and at that point, I couldn't have cared less what the professor wanted us to do. But this play, I think it was my favorite. It was called _Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? _and it was about this couple, George and Martha. They're both real winners and they have this crazy marriage. Anyway, Martha and George invite another, younger couple over to their house for drinks one night and I don't know, they just go nuts. They torture their guests and they torture each other and they pretend they have this dead son, only they really don't have any kids. And then, after fighting and spewing hatred at each for nearly three acts, they both sort of just…_come together_. They both acknowledge what their life is and they come to terms with the fact that they are distracted by illusions and that they're scared to live without them. I've been thinking about that play a lot lately, Gabriel. I've just been thinking."

More silence. Even the wind dropped away, leaving the chilly night open to all the small sounds of life in the desert, the distant yelp of a coyote, the slow, soft-bellied slither of a reptile, the scratching of little vermin. But even though she strained her ears and tried to listen, Max couldn't hear anything. The world was empty, a reflection of the void she still felt inside of her. It was, she realized, the pathetic fallacy at its best.

Perhaps this had been another mistake. Perhaps she shouldn't have called to him, even though she was broken and needed to feel his breathing body next to hers. Perhaps she should have left well enough alone.

Alone. Yes, that was best. She should have remained alone.

But then Gabriel ruptured the stony silence, the great river of his sentiment eroding the bedrock of his restraint. He turned slightly and looked at Max and she found she recognized the emotion in his eyes. It was not angelic. It was not human. It was there, just there

He smiled when he glanced at her, but she thought his smile was sad.

"I missed you," Gabriel said. "I missed you very much."

She had not expected that. Max twisted her fingers together, resisting the urge to reach out and touch one of his feathers and feel just how sharp they were. She felt as though Gabriel had given her a gift, saying what he had. And for a brief instant, the pain inside her was relieved. She took a shuddering breath, reveling in the sensation.

"Yeah," Max said. "I guess I missed you too. Why did you have to leave like that in the first place?" She knew she was being really obnoxious, asking him such a question when he had already restored a piece of her broken heart to her.

But Gabriel didn't seem to mind. He pursed his lips, his expression patronizing. "You asked it of me. You were angry."

"I wasn't angry at you," Max admitted. Her finger joints cracked as she clenched her hands into fists. "I wasn't really angry at anyone to begin with. I don't know what I am, actually."

"Lost," Gabriel supplied gently.

Max had never imagined him being capable of such tenderness before, and the low, murmuring tone of his voice nearly overwhelmed her. But then she remembered that night, that precious night a few days ago when he had kissed her.

And she had rejected him, only because it was the right thing to do.

But what about now? Was that still the right thing?

Probably not.

Max tried to focus her thoughts. Her head was throbbing and the aspirin had done a poor job in keeping most of her physical pain away for long. She tried to touch the ridge of stitches that held the gash on her brow closed, but then remembered the threat of infection and kept her hands where they were. It was strange, she thought, for her to feel so jumpy now. She should be tired. She should be weak. She should be sad.

But she wasn't, really. She wasn't at all.

Max glanced at the grave once more, trying to conjure up the familiar emotion of sorrow. But her heart was feeling hollow just then and she viewed the world as a dry husk, a shell that she had been wretched enough to inhabit, that was empty and unpromising, especially when she looked at Gabriel, especially when she saw him.

And she really wanted to touch him then, but was too afraid. Fear, yes. She could live with fear. It was solid. It was certain. It was…safe.

"Are you going to tell me where you went?" she asked, not wanting to talk, but unable to avoid the need as her lips trembled and her tongue began to feel numb. "Or am I not supposed to know? Is it a secret?"

Gabriel shifted, his significant weight making the bench groan. Leaning to the side, he picked at some of the scabbing brown varnish with his blunt fingernails. "It isn't a secret," he replied. "I went home after I left you. I had thought Michael would join me, but he seemed too concerned to leave you. I wonder, why did you not make him leave as well? Do you prefer his company over mine?"

Max's eyes went wide. She wasn't sure, but she thought Gabriel might be jealous. Jealous? Jealous of what? The notion left her slightly unsettled. She tried to tuck her feet closer to her bottom, her toes beginning to cramp with the cold. "I like you better than Michael," she said, only because she wanted to assuage his envy. "And for the record, I wanted your brother to leave too, but he didn't listen to me. You did." She paused and took a breath. "Thanks," she muttered. "Thanks for that."

"You are an exceedingly confusing little creature," Gabriel told her. There were several flakes of peeling varnish on the knees of his black pants. "But it is human nature, I suppose, to be uncertain."

Max wanted to argue with him, but she knew he was right. She ducked her chin against her collar, wishing she had something more than a thin t-shirt and pants on. Her exposed skin burned every time the wind blew. "Where exactly is home?" she asked him, hoping to disguise her doubt with curiosity. "Is your home in Heaven?"

"That is what you call it," Gabriel said. He suddenly seemed to tire of picking apart the bench and brushed the shavings from his pants.

Max swallowed, unsure if she wanted to take a leap and ask him something terrible. But as she was feeling particular brave (or foolish) that evening, she decided she might as well go ahead.

"Heaven," she said, "does that mean you saw Jack there?"

Gabriel froze. The name was like a spell, something from a fairy tale that set a curse on both of them. Max realized then that she should have kept her mouth shut and she also realized that Gabriel was just as devastated as she was.

Certain things, after all, seemed to be common in both angels and men.

And they had both loved that boy.

Gabriel hesitated, his hands resting on his thighs, his elbows slightly bent. Max found herself looking at his limbs, at the fine hair that crept up arms, at the smooth flesh of his biceps. She wanted to press her cheek to his shoulder, but knew that she shouldn't. That was not allowed.

But Gabriel didn't care, apparently. And perhaps he knew Max better than she knew herself, for he raised his right arm and reached over and pulled her to him.

It was, Max felt, probably the happiest moment in her life, sitting there with him, her simple wished fulfilled, the shadow of his great wings falling over her eyes until she understood how pleasant the dark could be.

His breath whispered over the top of her hair when he spoke and she savored each one of his words, lived for the subtle vibration that echoed in his throat when he talked and hummed in her ear, which was pressed to his neck.

"I did see Jack," he told her. "The boy is with his mother. I cannot begin to tell you how happy he is, how at peace. You would not understand. Your mind would not comprehend. Max, you would not recognize your nephew if you saw him. But do you trust me? Do you trust that I am telling you the truth?"

"Yes," she said and that was all.

For a moment, there was peace.

Max lifted one of her jittery hands and rested it on Gabriel's chest, on the hard piece of steel armor that guarded the place where his heart beat. She wanted to touch his flesh but could only feel the smooth coldness of the metal under her palm. Her shoulders began to ache as she sat there, the pain traveling in a long vine that twisted around her wounded wrist. Max kept the sling resting carefully on her lap. She wondered what would have happened if that bullet had gone through her head instead of her arm.

Would things be better then? Would she be with Jack and her sister and her parents? Would she be with Gabriel?

The question nagged at her, set its talons into the moment of peace until Max could only cling to Gabriel and hope, hope that she was worthy enough for Paradise. Worthy enough for him…

_Never. Never, never._

Her jaw softened under the weight of a sob. Max curled her tongue against the roof of her dry mouth, still tasting the last of that cigarette she had smoked hours ago with Charlie. Her breath was stale and she smelled of sweat and maybe blood. And still Gabriel held. And still Gabriel…loved her.

"Did he remember you?" she asked suddenly, falling back on another question to keep her awful, uncertain ruminations at bay. "Did Jack know who you were when you saw him? Did he…did he ask about me?"

Gabriel's wings shook slightly and it was only then that Max realized that he had been shielding her from the wind. He had known how cold she was. How empty and alone and desperate. Because he had been cold too. And empty. And alone. And so very desperate. It was commiseration at its best. It was companionship. It was something very like…

_Love._

"No," Gabriel said, his voice a warm hum in the base of his throat. "Jack did not ask for you, nor did he recognize me. It is not the true nature of things, of life and death. If you humans knew how horrible the earth really is and how wonderful Heaven will be, you would perhaps understand."

"I don't," Max admitted, lost to his words which were somehow strangely pleasant and foreboding at the same time.

"Death is another baptism," Gabriel explained thoughtfully. "It is, in its own way, a rebirth, and we cannot be reborn if we remember what has come before us. We cannot love Heaven if the earth still calls to us. Jack is beyond you now, Max, he is beyond what he knew of his life and all that humanity is forced to endure. He experiences only the true blessing of Paradise, the great, joyous present of everlasting peace. He does not remember how he was hurt. He will not remember those he left behind until they are meant to be reunited."

"He's forgotten me?" she asked, ashamed by the hot tears that welled in her eyes. She felt like a child, weeping for something that was lost, pinning all her selfish dreams and hopes on someone who deserved to be at peace, who deserved to rest.

Gabriel reached down and brushed her tears away with the soft side of his large thumb. "Yes."

"But I can't forget him."

"And therein lies the true misery of your race," the angel said. "You are trapped and Jack is free. I see now why my brother Michael pitied your kind. I…I pity you as well."

Max knew it was hard for him to admit that and as he spoke, she saw the private understanding reveal itself on his hard face.

"I pity you," he repeated. "Prophet."

Max pulled away from him slightly, but did not break his protective embrace. "What are you-"

"There are many mysteries," Gabriel said. He had to pause in order to swallow against the restricting tightness of his collar, his imprisoning halo. "There are many mysteries that even angels are not meant to comprehend. Michael was troubled by one. He told it to me. But I am not troubled by it. I understand where he only suspects. I know because I have seen you, Max. The mystery lies within you and I have carried it in my heart these last days. And my wisdom has been tried, but I am no longer blind. It only remains now for you to understand. Will you try? Will you try for me?"

There was something utterly ridiculous about all this and Max herself couldn't help but feel incredulous. But she didn't want to offend Gabriel with her crude human sensibilities, with the hardened instinct that told her to laugh at him instead of give in.

If only she would just give in, if only she would let go.

But she was standing on the precipice now, no, she was dangling on the edge, hanging on for dear life, because there might be nothing to catch her if she fell, there might be no one.

Or there could be Gabriel, if she dared to trust him.

"I'm confused," she said, realizing how truly innocent she was and how great he actually was, the light from Heaven still clinging to his limbs, still dusting his brow, making him beautiful.

And she, she had always been ugly. She had always been sinful.

But he knew her better. "You think you are unworthy," Gabriel said. "But you would be mistaken. You are blessed, Max. You are chosen. You are a prophet."

_Like Elijah, who went up to Heaven on his own in a chariot of fire_, Max thought, remembering something of her Sunday school lessons.

"I'm not a prophet," Max said, quick to denial what she felt might be blasphemy. "Gabriel, that's pretty crazy. I'm not…you probably know, I haven't been to church in years. I'm a lapsed Catholic."

"None of that matters anymore," he said.

"But it does!" Max tried to protest, but the wind came and took the denial from her lips, carried it away into the barren desert until it was lost in a great, lonely shriek. She felt colder then, somehow, even though Gabriel's wings protected her from the most fierce blasts. She began to shiver.

"When I first saw you," she said, "I didn't think you were an angel. That's human nature too, Gabriel. Disbelief."

"Doubt," he replied, his head bowed so that his chin nearly rested on the very top of her head, "Doubt is a convenient excuse. The trouble with you, Max, is that you do believe. You _do _have faith."

Her feet were cramped and she winced, wondering how quickly a person could develop frostbite. The wooden planks of the bench were hard beneath her body. "In what, exactly?" she muttered. "You're asking me if I think I'm some kind of holy woman. I'm not that delusional. I don't think I'm any better than I am, I don't-"

"Don't lie to yourself." Gabriel's mouth was close to her forehead. She could feel his lips moving, forming the words. "You must promise me that you will never lie to yourself."

"Gabriel," she began, but didn't know how to finish. Another denial seemed suitable, a rejection of his logic which was, to her, so unfathomable. "I'm _not_ a prophet or whatever you call it," she said, hoping to sound firm even though her voice trembled every time she shook with the cold. "Ugh, if you knew how many bad movies and bad books were based around the concept of a prophet leading the world out of darkness you'd know what a fucking cliché that is, which is why I can't believe you. Besides, I don't have visions. I don't hear voices. I don't have the slightest idea what the future holds-"

"But you help people," Gabriel said. His arms had fallen a little and his palms were pressed against her lower back, just as they had been the night when he had kissed her.

Max squirmed. She couldn't help but feel a little uncomfortable. "Is that all it takes to be a prophet these days?" she asked, aware of the cutting sarcasm in her voice.

"Perhaps."

"Well, I haven't helped many people lately. In fact, I've done the opposite. I've _hurt_ people, Gabriel."

"Max-"

"Don't lie to yourself," she countered, happy to turn his own admonition against him. "I've done things. I killed my sister."

"And I killed my brother," he replied.

Max looked up at him with a frown, annoyed that he had deterred her argument. "But I've done other things," she said, feeling truly powerful for the first time. She had a weapon that she could use, a sword she could wield against his knowledge, which was a little too solid for her liking. And she really wanted to poke holes in his argument now, because the reality of her life was just too unstable to support another truth. Max knew she couldn't be a prophet, and frankly, she didn't really want to be one.

"You know what a cop's job is, Gabriel?" she asked, not giving him a chance to respond before she plowed recklessly ahead, "we're supposed to help people, right? Protect those who cannot protect themselves. All right, I'll admit, I did a pretty good job of that for fourteen years. Helped my fair share of lost children get back to their mommies and even pulled some people out of car wrecks and burning buildings and flooded drain ditches. Arrested a bunch of scumbags who were beating on their wives and got the women to shelters. All right, so that's not bad. It's decent. Average, probably. But you know, that's all for shit, really. Because the moment it counted, the moment I _should_ have been a cop more than any other moment in my life, I turned around and ran."

Max paused, let her words sink in, hoping that Gabriel would understand her, would realize what she was trying to do. But his expression was too impassive for her to judge and for once, Max wished he would show just how disgusted he was with her, because she was truly disgusted with herself.

"Yeah," Max continued with a jerk of her chin. "I ran away with my tail between my legs and everything. Michael was in L.A. that night. He'll tell you how bad things were. People dying, running screaming through the streets. All blood and guts and hellfire. It was a moment when a person like me, a _prophet_, should have stood up and helped those people. But I didn't. I locked my own partner, a guy I'd been working with for years, out of the car and let him get his throat ripped out while he was screaming for help. And then I left my post, which by the way, cops aren't supposed to do during a disaster. I left my post, ran home, killed my sister and snatched Jack as quick as I could. Got us both out of town and let everyone else burn." She paused, her breathing shallow, her lungs empty.

"My partner," Max said, feeling as though she were about to suffocate. "He had a wife and two little kids. I could've gone back and gotten them too, cause their daddy wasn't coming home. I could've, but I didn't. I ran with Jack. So you see, I'm not a good person, not even a good cop and I'm sure as hell not a prophet."

Gabriel's eyes were on her, but Max knew she couldn't look at him. She was too weak and it was taking the very last of her effort to hold herself together, to keep all the fractured pieces of being pulled into one shaky whole and she thought she might truly fall apart if she saw his eyes.

But she'd be willing to bet money, she'd be willing to bet a hell of a lot of money, that he'd look sad again.

And that was her fault.

"Nice story," Max said. Her shame had risen into her cheeks and colored them a blotchy red. "I tell a real nice story, don't I? Well, I just wanted you to know that, I wanted us to be _clear_. Prophets help people, all right, I can understand that. It makes sense. But I don't know, whatever it is you think I'm doing or supposed to have done, you're wrong. I never really helped anyone, Gabriel. I can't even help myself."

_Because I'm not worth it_, she thought, but didn't dare say it aloud.

She thought he might yell at her then. Get really angry. Or maybe he would tell her that yes, she wasn't worth it. She wasn't worth him and he was heading back to Heaven, leaving her there to rot like the wasted corpse she was. Or maybe he wouldn't say anything at all. Somehow, Max thought that would be worst.

But Gabriel did say something. He said what her heart had expected him to say. He told what she had been waiting to hear all her long and lonely life.

"Max," he said. "I am in love with you."

And Max said the only thing she could possibly think of to say. "Yeah," she muttered, still not looking at him. "I figured that."

She did lean back against him, though, her head on his chest, just above the place where his heart was beating. Max felt his lips on her hair as he kissed her, as he held her, as they both held at each other.

The night was bold and beautiful around them, with bright stars and the shining cosmos, and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of Heaven.

And because the tune was running through her mind, Max began to sing. "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf. Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf?" She paused, she sighed. "I am George…I am."**

* * *

**Author's Note: **Well, I know I promised a slightly more uplifting chapter. I do sincerely hope this installment met your expectations. ;)

In chapter twenty-one, Michael and Gabriel make peace with each other. An unexpected occurrence at the ranch sends Gabriel into a panic. The next chapter is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days.

Thanks so much for reading, guys! If you happen to have a free moment, please leave a review. I thrive on feedback. Take care and be well, everyone!

_*This line comes from the song "Big Yellow Taxi" by Joni Mitchell. _

_**This line comes from "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" by Edward Albee. _


	21. Chapter Twenty One Worthy

**Author's Note: **Hello all! Boy, this was a tricky chapter to write…so many elements finally coming together. And it doesn't help that I have this horrible habit of rewriting and revising my chapters a million times before I post, haha. Seriously, I'm neurotic.

As always, I would like to take a quick moment and thank all my wonderful readers and those that reviewed, **saichick, Lexicon, ArmoredSoul **and **Melissa. **I would also like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list so far. You guys are fantastic! Thank you all so much. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-One Worthy **

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet

I see her walking now

Away from me so hurriedly

My reason must allow

That I had wooed not as I should

A creature made of clay

When the angel woos the clay

He'll lose his wings at the dawn of day.

_-On Raglan Road by Patrick Kavanagh  
_

It was a pleasant moment for Gabriel, sitting there with Max curled in his arms, her warm body pressed against the length of his torso. It was a time of softness, something that he thought she, with her broken heart, might need more than him. And Gabriel gave her what he could. He told her the things he knew she needed to hear. He whispered the words that would soothe her stirring, pained soul. He touched her, because he knew she needed to be touched.

It was a pleasant moment, but not perfect. Gabriel admitted the deficiency to himself, even as Max laid her head upon his chest, even when she was so blessedly happy. But he was not assuaged. He was not appeased or becalmed. There was a great rush within him, a stormy sigh that brewed in his heart and swelled up in his breast until he could only feel prickly worry. The world was beautiful that night, but dangerous. The muted colors of the desert blended into the flatlands, into the stones and gritty sand and the sharp-edged stars. And life itself seemed to race by, faster and faster, spinning, slipping, falling…

Gabriel tried to brace himself. He tried to steady his heart which was beating too quickly, and he tried to quiet his thoughts, which were merciless.

It was easy, his scholar's mind told him, to fall in love. And it was much too easy to be a fool about it.

Was he a fool?

Steadily, the moment began to lose some of its softness. Gabriel became aware of his discomfort, which stuck a sharp needle of unease into the scant peacefulness that remained. His wings were pushed against the aluminum siding of the house and his back ached and his arms were starting to go numb from the brash gusts of wind that came down from the mountains.

But he held Max. He let her brace her hand against his chest. He let her cry and talk. He let her press her forehead to his neck, her feverish flesh coming into contact with his bitterly cold iron collar.

True contentment was rare. Gabriel's mind was much too alert to be lulled into stupefying happiness. And there was something very deceptive about their reunion. Something sour. Something altered and incomplete.

Gabriel wondered what it was that they were missing and then he realized, with a painful jolt, that they still sat in the shadow of the grave.

Jack. They were missing Jack.

But Jack was at peace. He was in Paradise. Gabriel had seen the child for himself. Had witnessed the boy in the welcoming arms of his mother, experiencing the purest, most fervent joy a human heart could possibly know.

But the notion wasn't comforting. Nothing was. Not even the weight of Max's body in his arms.

He could only hear the tempest's rush of doubt in his veins. The unused, stale adrenalin that seemed to warn him of some danger although there was no danger to be seen.

_Do not lie to yourself_, Gabriel thought, recalling his previous warning. _This is not over. It will not be over until…_

Instinctively, Gabriel clenched his hand into a loose fist, his knuckles resting on Max's back.

_This is not over._

It would not be over because he knew, he knew what Michael had only guessed at.

And the knowing itself was unusual, a quiet sensation that formed in the pit of his gut and in the back of his mind. He knew Max was a prophet not because he had been told, but because he had seen.

He had seen her come sliding down into that dried-out gully with her gun raised, pointed at his temple, ready to kill. He had seen her touch her nephew on the shoulder and make him smile and laugh when they used to play cards every night. He had seen her weep for the sister she had killed. He had seen the fear in her eyes when he had kissed her. He had seen her soul bared when she first saw that grave.

He had seen all those things and he knew. Gabriel could read the script of her life, which was not written on her flesh like Jeep, but hidden within. A sacred mystery. A divine understanding.

He knew. He knew what Michael did not, because he knew Max, he knew _her._

Prophet. She was a prophet.

And that was what troubled him, sending shards of ice into his heart when he should have felt only warmth. Gabriel had had dealings with prophets before. He had descended from the Heavens and delivered onto them the very words of the Lord. He had been the Messenger and the holy herald and he had given to mankind great tidings and the fearsome signs of the end of the world. And he had seen what happened to those who listened, those who opened their minds and hearts and to whom the secrets of the divine were revealed.

He had seen such things…and he knew how terrible they were.

What Max was facing now was not beautiful or spiritual or even very holy. It was a trial. It was abundant hardship. It was a test of faith that might never be fulfilled…if she failed, if Max failed.

He did not want her to fail, but she was weak. She was all too human.

_It is our place to guide them._

Those were Michael's words, words Gabriel had disregarded, had scorned, even. But now they reverberated with a hint of foresight, with a promise that was subtle but potent.

_It is our place to guide them…to guide her._

_Yes_, Gabriel thought, accepting, once more, what duty was entrusted to him. _Yes, I will._

He tightened his hold on Max, remaining cautious of all the aching, tender bruises on her body, her sore head and wounded wrist and the painful void in her heart. The void that he was meant to fill, although he did not know if he ever could.

"Max," he said, dropping his voice into a whisper so as not to disturb her if she might actually be sleeping.

She stirred. She looked up at the eager stars and smiled. "It's a nice night," she said, her tone easy.

Gabriel, however, did not trust in her nonchalance. "It is," he said carefully.

She stirred again, slipping her hand from his chest while she cradled her wounded arm against her stomach. "It reminds me of that other night," she continued. Her expression was suddenly wistful. "Remember…when we went for that walk on the old bridle path. Remember…when I felt like I couldn't stay inside the house any longer because we were waiting, just waiting for nothing and that was terrible."

"I do," Gabriel replied. Without thinking, he touched the flesh of her neck with the tip of his finger, feeling the taut, tense muscle beneath. Her pulse was throbbing. He could feel it.

"We were waiting," Max echoed. "What were we waiting for?"

He paused, wondering if she was testing him. But her words were honest and simple. The question was not a riddle, only a vague hope for understanding. "I do not know," he said at length, wishing he could giver her more…give her everything.

Max hunched her shoulders, her back rounding out like a cat's. "I don't think I want to wait anymore," she said.

She spoke quietly and Gabriel was lost to the sound of her voice, the fluting vibrato of her words, which to him, were meaningless. He listened only to her voice and not to her. He listened to her soul and not her mind.

Or else he would have known, he would have guessed…

Max looked over her shoulder at him, shivering slightly as he let his finger fall farther down her neck. "I'm tired," she said abruptly.

Gabriel glanced at her and saw the dark smudges underneath her eyes, saw the pale cast of her flesh. "Should I bring you inside?"

"No." Max chewed on her lip. "I think…well, if it's not too rude or obnoxious of me…I think I would like to be alone. Just for a little while. Not for long. Not like before, when I told you to leave me. I just want some time. A few hours, all right? Can I have that, Gabriel? Will you give that to me?"

And he knew, even then, that he was making a mistake by agreeing, but he could deny her nothing.

He was in love.

Max sat up fully, her stomach pressed against the protective wall of his arms. She seemed to be shaking off her apathy, the listlessness and languor that had made her weak and insipid. It was beautiful, almost, watching her come alive again. She was shedding the overwhelming, formless cloak of sorrow in favor something that was more defined. Holding her still, Gabriel could feel her limbs strengthening, her body bracing itself for the pain, the agony of revival.

And then Max stood, shakily, her knees hitting the side of the bench, her hands outstretched in order to catch herself should she fall. She stood before him and her hair was undone and her eyes were wild and he thought, more than ever, that she looked like a warrior.

_A warrior. _

The realization sent a delightful chill racing along his flesh, a chill that soon gave way to promised heat and a fire that ran wild. And that fire, he knew, came from within her.

Because she was going to fight….

_Warrior._

And she was worthy of him. More than worthy

Max smiled up at the slowly descending moon, her arm still hanging from the sling.

"It's a nice night," she repeated. "Don't you think it's beautiful, Gabriel?"

"Yes," he said, seeing her hair caught in the breeze. "Yes, it is."

She dropped her eyes to the ground, her toes arched over the pebbly soil. "My feet are cold," she said. "I'm going to go inside and have a cup of coffee, okay?"

It was a mild rejection, her quiet, gentle way of telling him that she wanted to be alone. He tried not to let her brusqueness sting him, but the thought of solitude was unattractive. He wanted to be close to her now, to see her reclaim what she had lost, to see her cross the border into a life that was new and daunting, but their's. Their's together.

He wanted to be with her.

But Max shrugged him off. She moved away from him, testing their bond, testing him, until he thought that perhaps it was he and not her who had needed those solemn moments in the moonlight.

With some difficulty, Gabriel remembered his doctrine of detachment and he allowed stoicism to drop a mask over his face.

"I will leave you, then," he said in as even a voice as he could manage.

Max was hobbling around the back of the house when she turned, offering him a look that was surprisingly coy. "Don't go far," she said, a hint of brevity in her tone.

That struck Gabriel as odd. He turned on the bench, craning his neck as far as he could to get a better look at her. Max had her good hand braced on the side of the house, her fingers splayed against the aluminum siding. It was difficult for her to walk and she swayed every now and then, wincing when her toes skimmed over a particularly jagged rock. And yet her determination, her bold streak of independence somehow renewed his admiration.

And all his practiced instinct was numbed by the sight of her. He could not see. He could not realize. He could not understand.

_This is a farewell_, dulled reason told him. _She is leaving you. _

At the last moment, before she passed through the garage door, he reached for her, his arms extending in a final plea.

_Max_, he wanted to call for her, but she was already gone.

The night belonged to him alone, then. The empty stars, the unknowing moon and the wind that told him that this wasn't over, that it would never be over.

"Prophet," Gabriel said and he found that he hated the word.

* * *

He went back to the mountains, to the small vale with the picturesque stream and the perfumed grass that spoke of spring although it was only the dead of winter. From the height of the heavens the tiny house became a speck of enviable light on the flatlands, a sign of life that Gabriel was reluctant to leave behind. He flew amongst the thin, vaporous clouds and then wheeled back, searching for the lonely beacon through the black watches of the night. But all too soon, the yawning mountain vale opened before him and he landed, standing on the lip of the cliff with nothing but mist and air before his eyes and no sign of what he had left behind.

Gabriel threw himself down on the grass and pretended that he was back in Eden, in a place that had always been beautiful to him despite the great evil that had been wrought there. He laid on his back and looked at the peaks of the mountain, the smooth faces carved into the ancient rock, the cracks and crevices that had been eroded by vengeful storms and the rain.

He closed his eyes for a moment and listened to the sound of air rushing into his lungs. His heart was pounding in his ears, creating an uncomfortable staccato that made him feel flushed and feverish. In response, his stomach began to work itself into knots and Gabriel touched the healing wound on his abdomen, the place Max had stitched with her own nimble fingers when she had kept him as a prisoner in her garage.

He smiled, wondering how he had ever allowed himself to be captured….

"I am happy for you."

The voice was not loud, but it jerked Gabriel away from his memories and back to the cold mountainside. His eyes opened and his vision cleared and he saw Michael standing above him.

His brother was laughing and the sound was clear, an echo of the sun in the dark. Instinctively, Gabriel stretched his arm up and Michael reached down his hand, pulling the larger angel to his feet with a quiet grunt. They both stood on the lip of the vale, tiny streams of disturbed rock and soil cascading down the cliff-side into the valley below.

Michael had his face turned to the wind and he let the howling gusts rub his cheeks raw. "Welcome back," he said, with only a hint of self-satisfaction. "I knew you could not bear to be apart from her for too long."

"That is true," Gabriel admitted, "but I was not the first to relent. Max called to me. And I came."

"Then I should say you relented anyway," Michael replied, his lips turned up in a bright grin, "for I have never known you to be at the beck and call of a human before."

Gabriel grimaced. There still existed some contention between Michael and him, and he knew that he wasn't ready to appease his brother's gloating. It was too much for him to admit that Michael, as always, had been right.

Instead, he settled for a frown to drive away his companion's impertinent smile. "Did you follow me here?" he asked, his breath hissing through his clenched teeth.

Michael, however, was in a playful mood. He lifted his hand and pawed at Gabriel's shoulder, knocking the other angel off balance until he teetered on the edge of the cliff. "It was I who brought you here first," he said, "_You_ followed _me._"

"Childish," Gabriel growled, although there was no obvious malice in his voice. He beat his great wings once, steadying himself until he felt secure in his standing once more.

Michael was laughing at him, his mouth split open in a smile that was all too eager and alive with unabashed delight. It was one of those rare moments when he looked almost boyish, the lines of care falling from his face, giving his flesh the tone of youth and his manner the vibrancy of an innocent heart.

And despite himself, despite his stoic sensibilities, Gabriel wanted to join Michael in his careless laughter and wild spirit. He wished to play and carouse as they had when life was young and Adam and Eve still dwelled with their Father in Eden. He wished to love the world for what it was, despite its taint and sin and wickedness. He wished to be joyful and embrace the blessing he had granted, the blessing that existed within Max, that little human woman he had dared to love.

Michael knew all this. His own expression was a reflection of his brother's yearning and he dropped down onto the grass with all the grace of a drowsy beast, his long legs dangling over the cliff-side.

With no sign of reluctance, Gabriel joined him and together they sat, shoulder-to-shoulder, while the stones of the mountain slumbered beneath them and the wind whispered wordless hymns as it swept past their bodies.

"I knew that you would love her," Michael said, his voice free from remonstrance, but open to admiration and respect as he glanced at his brother. "I knew from the moment I came upon you sitting in her garage-"

"Chained like a mongrel," Gabriel grunted.

"And you hated her then. You thought she was ugly, but you did not see-"

"Beauty," Gabriel replied, thinking of Max and how she had looked standing before him, her arm in the sling, her hair mussed, but her eyes burning with that potent fire. "Beautiful," he repeated to himself.

Michael did not hear him. "She was waiting a long time," he continued. "I think she was waiting for you."

Gabriel did not respond right away, but let Michael's words sink in. They warmed his heart, in a strange way. They made him feel…special. Loved.

But was he loved in return?

Gabriel tried to shake the treacherous doubt from his mind. He knew that he loved Max, but not in a manner that was carnal, no. Angels were beings of light, not physical matter and procreation itself was denied them. Gabriel affections were not base, were not founded in lust nor the earthly desires meant for humans alone. He loved Max in a way that transcended the flesh, in a way that was perhaps sacred for its innocence and purity.

But even so, Gabriel wrestled with the concept. He was a stranger in a foreign land, a creature unused to the gentle comforts of affection and it all made him feel very uncertain. And it was the uncertainty that troubled him the most, the constant questioning of himself and his ability to extend his heart to another. He was not sure that love could come naturally to him and to stand there now and discuss it so openly with Michael seemed almost blasphemous to him. It would be easy, he realized, to slip back into the safety of denial. Denial was secure. Denial was protective. He could be the stoic warrior, then. He could regain all that he had lost.

There was, he reasoned, no true happiness in love. Acceptance did nothing. He still felt desperate, he still felt lonely and he still wondered if perhaps he was making a mistake.

Max, after all, had not necessarily told him that she returned his affection. And there was the distinct possibility that he, the Left Hand of God, was a fool.

The splendor of the dying moon and the bright streak of Heaven's stars no longer attracted him. He rose and turned away from the edge of the cliff, drawing deeper into the moody shadows of the vale. The thin stream was all but frozen in its banks and Gabriel dug the toe of his boot into the soft soil, driving blades of young grass into the water.

Michael did not follow him at once. He remained by the edge of the cliff and when the wind rose, he opened his wings and let his feathers catch the air. For a moment, Gabriel thought he was going to pitch himself forward in flight

"You are angry with me," Michael said, bracing his body against every errant gust.

"Yes," Gabriel admitted. There could be no secrecy between them now. Only truth, only honesty, which itself came with a heavy cost. But Gabriel was willing to pay the price if only to unburden his mind. And there was a part of him, a large part of his heart, that truly missed his brother.

They had been at odds for so long, quarreling over matters that should have gladly been settled with a warm embrace and an apology. But he was stubborn and Michael was stubborn and they had both dug in their heels and refused to admit that neither of them had been right.

Gabriel wondered if he could swallow his pride now…if it meant that he could have his brother back when he needed him the most.

Perhaps. Or perhaps he was too far gone already, like Lucifer, when he fell.

"Do you still believe I had something to do with Jack's death?" Michael asked suddenly.

Gabriel almost winced, fresh pain searing through his chest. He jammed his heel deeper into the moist soil, grinding his foot until the dirt nearly covered the sole of his boot. _Yes, this is honesty_, he thought. The brutality of it almost made him wish to withdraw and face the world alone.

But Michael was still sitting there, still watching him sadly and Gabriel remembered how much he had loved their brotherhood.

Breathing slowly so as to steady his nerves, he shook his head. "I am sorry," he said in a voice that was more strained than he would have liked it to be. "That was very wrong of me. That was…cruel of me."

"Senseless, perhaps," Michael commented, "but your malice was obscured. I do not think you believed your own accusations. You loved that boy, Gabriel. It was terrible for you to see him die."

"Terrible," Gabriel echoed. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he added, "Yes, yes it was terrible. I try to numb my grief with petty comforts."

"I understand."

"I tell myself that the boy is at peace and yet, the wild sorrow lingers."

Michael had risen ad drawn closer to him as they were speaking and now his brother stood by his shoulder and they both looked into the stream, watching their cold, pale reflections stare back at them. "Now," he said softly, his voice a careful whisper, "now you see what it is to be human."

Gabriel did not reply, but he touched his chest. He laid his fingers across the spot where Max had pressed her own hand and he tried to feel his heartbeat. The metal of his breastplate was chilled.

Michael stirred by his side and Gabriel watched his fitful reflection in the stream. He saw his brother frown.

"There is something else between us," he said with an unusual amount of hesitance. "Something-"

"Deeper," Gabriel supplied. If Michael could be honest, than so could he.

"I hate your anger," his brother said.

Gabriel heard Michael move uneasily, his footsteps stirring the tender grass. The tiny sliver of sky visible from between the rocky walls of the vale had been stained a dark blue, with the black of the night ebbing away in favor of the rising dawn. Gabriel felt a sense of urgency rush over him. He looked at Michael and saw his brother standing nearby. His shoulders were stooped, his bearing distant.

_Not much time_, he thought vaguely. _We do not have much time_.

"You are right," he said, although the admission was terribly painful. Gabriel felt the words scrape against his throat, pulling at his vocal chords as though they were jagged pieces of stone. "My anger is…false. It is wrong. Unwarranted. I am not angry with you, Michael, I am jealous."

"Jealous?" Michael's whole body moved as he spoke. His long feathers rustled, the tips trailing against the ground, poking holes into the soil. "Have I given you cause to be jealous?" he asked, his tone touched not with spite, but pure curiosity.

Gabriel raised his shoulders in a helpless shrug. "Yes, although I know it was unintentional. You are too good, Michael, to ever purposefully hurt me. I, on the other hand…I am wretched."

"Do not say that." Michael started forward. He reached out a hand and touched the leather vambrace strapped over Gabriel's right wrist. "You are not wretched. It wounds me to see how little you think of yourself, especially when I can only love you. Do you not see, Gabriel, how truly worthy you are? How worthy you have always been?"

"I am not," Gabriel was surprised when he choked on a sob. "I am not worthy, Michael and I know this because I have seen you with them, with humans, with her…. If she loved you, if you were the one Max loved, you would accept her blindly. Happily. I cannot. Even now, oh God, even now I cannot!"

"Gabriel, Gabriel." Michael raised his hand and folded his fingers over his brother's shoulder. They stood close together, Michael's embrace steadying the larger angel as the wind shrieked through the crevices in the rock and the stream stirred in its banks and the whole world seemed to be slipping, slipping, falling…

"You are ashamed," Michael said gently. "And you should not be. You deal too much in pride, in restraint."

"I _have_ opened with you," Gabriel protested, hating, all the while, how weak his voice sounded when marked with tears. "I have told you what burdens my heart only to face your reproach. Do not mock me, Michael-"

"I would never mock you."

"Why has this happened?"

"You are not being punished."

"She cannot love me."

"She does." Michael put his hands on either side of Gabriel's neck, his finger's splayed against his jaw.

There was a moment of silence. Gabriel knew he should have felt at peace, but his heart was racing and his skin was colored with a dangerous flush and he felt, almost, as if he could throw himself back off the cliff and into the reaching mist below. He wanted to escape, to indulge his fears until he could be free from them, from Max…

For she had not said that she loved him. She had never…

But it was Michael who held him there, the brother he had scorned, the companion he had dared to hate. Gabriel was bewildered feeling the hot kisses of the tears on his cheeks, which ran so readily down his face and dripped over Michael's fingers.

It was awful. The cold mountain air filled his lungs with daggers and he could not breathe and he felt sick and ashamed for all that had done. For Michael, lying on the floor in that diner with the hot spray of blood around his head like some blasphemous halo. For Jack and Max's sister and the young girl Audrey, who's body had been so cruelly crushed beneath his when they were thrown from the car. For the world, which was now dead, a Garden of Eden scorched not by hell fire, but the very light of Heaven. For men, who were lost. And for himself, he who was lost with them.

Gabriel looked at his brother, he found his eyes through his tears and he knew what he should say, the one thing that had burned in his soul and numbed his heart and had kept him bound to the dying earth when all he wanted was to fly again.

He wanted to say it and he needed to say it and the words, the bitter words of absolution, were on his lips, but he could not speak.

It was Michael, however, who spoke for him.

"Forgive me," his brother said. "Forgive me."

And that was all. It was finished.

Gabriel swallowed away his tears, his repressed sobs forming a thick lump in the back of his throat. Raising his hand, he pressed his knuckles against Michael's chest, on the place where his heart beat and where the true essence of life existed, the life that he had been so wrong to take.

Gabriel didn't say anything. He kept his hand on Michael's heart and was comforted by its measured beating, by all that it promised him and all the blessings he had already been granted.

"You are forgiven," he said at length and the words were a vow, not only to Michael, but to Max, the human who had sinned. The human he loved.

And Michael smiled.

A sudden light pierced the narrow mountain vale, a creeping warmth that sent away the lingering shadows and put diamonds into the ice-strewn stream and the dewy grass. The world was reborn.

Gabriel turned to the east and Michael with him and together, the brothers watched the sun rise.

* * *

He gave Max a few hours. He waited until the mountain vale was flooded with light and the sun high enough to cast a shadow before he thought of returning to the ranch. Michael went with him and their flight back over the flatlands soon turned into a game, with each brother joyfully trying to outrace the other.

In the end, it was Gabriel was won.

As soon as he landed outside the house, he felt the burden of reality descend upon him. He had been too long amongst the hazy reaches of the uncertain heavens to appreciate the solid beauty of the earth. As he looked about himself, he saw all the little things that had become dear to him in so short a time; the shadowed outline of the barn, the wooden fences, the tack shed, with its cracked leather saddles and empty feed bins and tarnished bits. And then there was the grave, the small mound of soil and sand that sat by the far side of the old shed.

Gabriel glanced at the crooked cross with a sad sort of understanding. There would always be, he realized, that tender place in his heart, that flaw in his happiness. It was a wound he knew wouldn't heal. And he didn't want a scar to form over the pain until it was smooth and unnoticeable, a simple mark of something lost but ultimately forgotten. Jack deserved more than that. He deserved to be remembered, to be mourned and Gabriel had loved that boy, had loved him enough to honor him the only way he could ever properly be honored.

The memory of the child would remain with him, unaltered, undying, alive again in shadows and thoughts and remembrances that he would always hold as sacred. There would be no comfort, no end to Gabriel's grief, but an understanding of what Jack had given him, the great joy and the desperate sorrow. And in that joy and in that sorrow, he found something of release.

It was, he decided, his final penance.

Standing a few feet from the grave, Gabriel realized that he was finally at peace with himself. He felt full and he felt whole and he felt loved…

Loved, yes. He could allow himself to feel loved.

Looking towards the small ranch house with its unwashed windows and faded aluminum siding and the garage, which almost seemed too bulky to fit the narrow building, Gabriel thought of Max. She would probably be sitting in the kitchen because she was too stubborn to go back to bed, sipping her cup of coffee as she waited for him to come back. And he had promised her, he had promised to return.

_Don't go far._

Michael landed on the ground next to him, his impact light, his body straightening as he folded up his wings and shook the cold from his feathers.

"You will stay?" his brother asked him, nodding in the direction of the house, unable to keep the boyish smile from his ageless face.

"I will," Gabriel said. "She has asked it of me-" But he stopped. His voice died when he heard it.

The baby was crying. Wailing. Screaming. The sound ruptured the sleepy stillness of the dawn, sending out a warning that was both shrill and terrible. Gabriel's mind revolted against the noise, his blood freezing as the cry broke off into tiny, breathless sobs.

The brothers looked at each other. At once, Michael's expression hardened, changing from carefree to concerned. Gabriel instinctively clenched his hands into fists, the true inelegance and ungainliness of his great body wretchedly clear to him. As the child cried, he began to realize how utterly helpless he was in the face of such human misery. How utterly powerless and weak.

And that shamed him.

Michael, on the other hand, had always been sure of himself.

Without a moment's delay, he strode purposefully towards the house, calling out "Charlie! Jeep!" in a voice that was strong despite the small tremor at the corner of his mouth.

_Max_, Gabriel thought, but said nothing. He followed his brother silently as they rounded the back of the house, passing the picnic bench on which he had sat with Max only a few short hours ago. But the bench was empty now, nothing but bare wooden planks and chipped varnish and stale memories that were already falling to forgotten dust…

_Max, Max…this is a farewell._

"Charlie! Jeep!" Michael called again. He had broken into a hurried trot. "Charlie! Jeep!"

This time, someone answered him.

"In here, Michael," Charlie replied, her tired voice obscured by the crying baby. "We're in the garage here."

Gabriel saw Michael round the corner, saw him pause when he came to the open door of the garage. And he knew, he just knew.

_Max…_

She wouldn't be waiting for him.

Gabriel joined his brother by the door and his heart sank when saw how bare the place looked, the concrete floor stretching out before him, the old power tools pushed against the walls, the pile of blankets and rags still lying in the corner where Max had left them. The air was cold and smelled of motor oil and exhaust.

"I can't believe it," Jeep said, sounding truly angry for the first time. He was standing next to Charlie in the center of that wide open space where the pick-up had been parked. "She took our truck, Michael. She _stole_ it from us."

"Jeep," Charlie scolded. She was rocking her baby fitfully in her arms, her movements quick and tense and not the least bit soothing. "Hush now, Robbie, hush," she muttered. "You just hush."

"What's happened?" Michael asked, although Gabriel thought it was rather obvious.

Suddenly weak-kneed, he took a step back, his hand coming to rest on a rusty lawn mower. The pain sloughed off beneath his palm and he glanced at the name emblazoned on the green side. It read _John Deere_.

Jeep was adamant. He paced. He threw up his hands and stretched out his arms as if he meant to touch the walls on either side of him.

"She took our truck," he said incredulously. "She just took it, Michael. I swear to God I didn't hear anything or I would have stopped her. Charlie was sleeping. I was sleeping. I woke up this morning and the house was empty and then I come out here and see this. What…why would Max do this to us?"

"She thought she had to," Charlie amended, still struggling with her squalling baby. "Jeep, she wasn't being mean about it-"

"After all we've done for her, trying to be nice, helping out around here," Jeep ranted. He scuffed the toe of his sneaker against the floor. "You told us to come here, Michael, I don't know what the hell for. We're in deeper shit now than we were to begin with-"

"Stop!" Charlie interrupted him sharply. She narrowed her pretty blue eyes until she looked quite fierce. "Jeep, it's all right. She didn't mean any harm. Here." Balancing the infant in one arm, she fished around in the pocket of her wrinkled jeans and pulled out what looked to be a crumpled napkin. "I found this on the kitchen table."

"Give it to me," Michael instructed. He reached forward.

But Gabriel suddenly came alive. A sense of painful desperation stole over him, bringing an unwelcome ache to his heart, which he had dared to open to her, to Max, to that woman…

And she was gone. She had lied to him. She had…

She had tried to tell him, but he hadn't listened.

_I don't think I want to wait anymore._

Charlie recoiled slightly when Gabriel tried to take the note, but he snatched it from her limp hand anyway, the soft tissue paper ripping in his hand. The pen strokes on the napkin were small and tight, he noticed, the cramped writing exuding distinct embarrassment.

He held the paper in his hand and read it quietly to himself once, then twice, his brow furrowing as a new knot of worry settled into his stomach.

_Jeep and Charlie,_

_I don't usually steal things, but I jacked your truck. Sorry. I'm not taking it far, only to the blockade on the highway so I can pick up my squad car. I'll leave the keys in glove compartment. You can stay in my house as long as you want. I don't care._

_Max_

And that was it. Gabriel was surprised at how angry he felt.

He looked at Michael, hating his brother then, hating him for his soft words and assurances. _You are not being punished._

"It's over," he said. He thrust the napkin at Michael, unable to hold it any longer. "You were wrong. It doesn't matter to her. She's human. She's-"

Michael smoothed the note out in his palm, his expression blank. "Did you read the back?" he asked. He paused, then added. "You have no faith in her, Gabriel."

That stung him. Bitterly. Gabriel had been close to regaining his pride, to closing himself up again as he eschewed Max's thoughtlessness, her utter and obvious lack of love.

She was a human, after all. He should have expected it.

But his reasoning could not be reconciled with his experiences. There was still too much of Max that he could love and his remembrances of her folded eagerly in his embrace were strong enough to dispel his renewed doubt.

Gabriel reluctantly edged his way over to Michael, peering over his brother's shoulder at the heavily creased napkin. There had been a second note, he realized, written on the other side of paper. The writing was still tiny and some words had been crossed out, as if Max didn't know exactly what she wanted to say. But what she had left for him, what was there, gave him hope.

_Gabriel,_

_I'm sorry, but we both knew I wasn't really worth you. Not yet, anyway._

_Max_

Gabriel took the note from Michael. He ran his finger over the last few words.

_Not yet, anyway_.

That meant, it meant…

He wanted to tell her then that she was worthy, but he knew it wouldn't matter. Not until Max had settled the matter for herself. Not until she understood.

"Prophet," his brother muttered gently.

Gabriel looked at Michael. He understood. And he was happy enough to admit that his brother was right.

"Thank you," he said.

Michael only nodded.

"Look." Jeep said, turning away from Charlie as he crossed the empty garage. "If she's that crazy, if she's that unstable, then maybe we should just let her go. And wherever she went, she won't get far with her head cracked open and her arm all wrapped up in that sling. Maybe she'll be smart and come back. Maybe she'll-"

"She's not unstable," Michael replied. He folded the note neatly. "And she isn't coming back." He paused and smiled to himself. "Not yet, anyway."

"Well, when?" Jeep asked bluntly.

But Charlie silenced him. She reached put her hand on his arm. "It doesn't matter," she said, looking for an instant like the Madonna, her expression kind and soft and knowing.

_Mother_, Gabriel thought when he glanced at her and saw the now dozing babe in her arms as she stood with her Joseph.

He had hope.

"Here it is, then," Michael said, looking at his brother. His tone was slightly foreboding and yet there was a pleasant undercurrent to it, a challenge that hearkened to Gabriel, making him feel wondrously alive. "You have a choice to make," he told him. "What will you do?"

And Gabriel knew this was the moment he had been waiting for, the moment when he would be called to stand up for the one thing he had never imagined to possess.

Love. And Max.

He could abandon her. He could return home. He could ignore and try to forget. But he couldn't, God, dear Father, he couldn't.

_It is our place to guide them_, Gabriel thought. He still felt the weight of Max's body in his arms. A smile awoke in his heart. "I am going to find her."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you happen to have some free time, please do leave a review. Feedback really means the world to me and I truly appreciate any comments I receive.

In chapter twenty-two, Max finally returns to the ruined city of L.A. and makes a shocking discovery at her sister's apartment. The next installment is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!


	22. Chapter Twenty Two The City of Angels

**Author's Note: **Ah, this story is starting to wind down. Only three more chapters left. I really can't believe it.

As usual, I would like to thank all my fabulous readers and my reviewers, **saichick** and **ArmoredSoul**. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Thank you all so very much! I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-Two The City of Angels**

"_What am I doing?" _

Max posed the question to herself continuously, even as her body, a veritable puppet on strings, went through a series of motions that seemed so utterly ridiculous. She wondered what she was doing when she left Gabriel alone on the picnic bench. She wondered what she was doing when she didn't sit down to have that cup of coffee, but instead fished her blood-stained police shirt out of the garbage and found her Kevlar vest and handgun. She wondered what she was doing when she scribbled her note on the napkin and jacked the truck, which Jeep and Charlie probably needed a hell of a lot more than she did. And she wondered what she was doing, what in God's name she was doing, when she picked up her squad car down at the blockade and drove five hours non-stop to Los Angeles, with a bad concussion and a bullet hole through her wrist.

It was insanity. It was her own personal madness. It was like the final act in some Shakespearean tragedy, when Hamlet's revenge came only after everyone he had loved had died.

"Though this be madness, yet there is method in it," Max muttered as the fledgling dawn came pouring through her dusty windshield, the great expanse of the deserted highway opening up before her as she drove and drove and drove. The archaic words, which sounded so ineloquent to her ear, rattled around in her brain like a smooth marble. She let her mind play with the phrase, toy with it childishly as if she could possibly diagnose her own distraction and find some meaning in what should have been entirely meaningless.

Max half feared, as the hours ticked by and the battered squad car strayed farther and farther from the questionable comfort of the old ranch, that she would never understand why she had chosen to leave. It was an impulsion at best, a quiet unease that wrapped around her heart until there was room only for panic.

Panic. Wild, animalistic panic. Fear founded in the primal. The frantic, thoughtless response of a dumb beast. Max knew that she was a reactionary creature, her body primed to heed the call of fight or flight. It was the instinctual mechanism that had first driven her to leave L.A. with Jack. Now, ironically, something of that same intuition was guiding her back, forcing her, dragging her, pulling her to a place that could offer her nothing. _Nothing_.

And Gabriel, he had offered her something. He had offered her…

_Moon and stars. The light of Heaven. Feathers. The night that was cold but somehow beautiful. Max, I think I am in love with you…_

_Oh God._

She had left him. Coldly. Heartlessly. She had taken his gift and destroyed it, because she was an animal, she was dumb beast who could feel, but not understand.

Or maybe she did understand. Maybe she did understand and was frightened. So very frightened.

_Stars. Moon. His feathers brushing against her arm. Don't go far. Don't go far…_

"What am I doing?" Max asked the quiet confines of the car and the long stretch of blank highway and the sun, which was just coming up over the mountains. "What am I doing?"

But there was no answer, and the world, the dying world, gave her nothing.

She drove.

* * *

When she pulled off the interstate, guiding her banged up squad car around the empty and abandoned vehicles, she got her first glimpse of Los Angeles. It was early afternoon and the city was lying beneath a thick veil of mist, which Max soon realized wasn't mist at all, but smoke. Swollen black and grey plumes spiraled up from charred buildings. In some places, the blacktop was cracked and she half expected to see sulfur and ash come pouring up through the sidewalks, because this was as close to Hell as it got.

_So, _Max thought, _this_ _is what the end of the world looks like._

As she drove cautiously down one avenue, instinct still forcing her to slow at the intersections even though all the stop lights were out, Max was surprised at how sad she felt. Truth be told, she had never liked L.A. much, being an East Coast girl through and through. But even she experienced a trembling sense of awe and terror when she saw the ruins, the broken out store windows, the partially collapsed houses, the bodies which littered the streets and had already begun to rot. And yet, it was the little things that bothered her the most, not the bodies or the fires or the great wreck of humanity that spilled out over the boulevards in a fitful orgy of destruction.

She bypassed a baby carriage lying on its side by a strip mall and a family van that had been completely torched but still had a child's car seat perched on the roof like a garish ornament. There was a clothing store that had all its windows busted and the mannequins were tipped over, their heads and torsos hanging out into the street in what could have been a grotesque marionette show.

It was all those things, all those little hints of humanity, of lives that were suddenly and brutally interrupted, that made her sick. And it was easy for Max to feel sick, with a steady pulse of pain beating away in her head and her wrist so sore it was nearly impossible to keep the steering wheel straight.

She eased her foot off the gas and settled it over the brake when she came to her old precinct, her heart sinking when saw that most of the patrol cars had been stolen and the American flag was hanging in tatters from a slightly askew flagpole.

Max hunched over the steering wheel, focusing on the pain in her head and in her wrist, because it was too much, it was just too much.

Was there no one left alive?

The notion was terrible, like something out of a horror movie, but it resonated deep within Max. A part of her had been fearful to encounter another pack of desperate men like the ones she and Jack had met on their way to the powerhouse. But on the other hand, even the faintest echo life, even the smallest promise of humanity tempted her with hope. There was a loneliness in all this, along with an urgency that made Max want to get out of her car and scream at the top of her lungs just so someone would hear her. Anyone. Anyone at all.

Was there no one left alive?

She left the precinct, remembering her brother officers. Her partner Joe. Ross, her sergeant who had a great sense of humor but was struggling with alcoholism. Travis, the new rookie who had just come out of the Academy, but showed such promise. Dead, all dead.

As Max drove back up the street, turning a few corners until she was in the neighborhood by her apartment, she began to feel like a solitary mourner at a funeral. A witness to something that was almost too terrible to be borne alone, alone because there was no one left. Not Gary, the guy who ran the dry cleaners around the corner. Not Mrs. Martinez, who was recently divorced and lived with her three kids in the apartment below Max. Not her landlord Sam. Not the young couple who walked their golden retriever together on nice mornings. Not the people whom she had passed by every day, whom she had seen in glimpses, in bare reflections of daily life and the shared experience of the human condition. Dead. They were all dead. Some were lying in the streets, others in their homes. All had been killed, but there were others who had suffered through possession first. _The weakest willed are the easiest to turn._

And no, she thought, there probably wasn't any method to this madness. All of a sudden the world had stopped living and everyone else had stopped with it, had fallen where they stood or been chased and hunted down like beasts in the field.

Max was sick, sick in her heart and in her mind and in her soul, which was still bound to a forsaken earth.

"It's not fair," Max said and she hoped that God would hear her. "This isn't fair."

Sitting there in her squad car, looking at the waste of the world, she wondered if He was listening. Or maybe He just didn't care.

* * *

Max drove around L.A. for another half hour when she noticed her tank was running low on gas. Having nowhere else to go, she made a quick u-turn and drove out to the pretty suburb where her sister used to live.

It was strange to see how normal Laurie's apartment building looked in the daylight. The residential street, with its row of neat palm trees and slightly overgrown lawns had an air of indecency about it. Parking her squad car opposite the building, Max thought it was wrong for a place to seem so quiet and undisturbed and even peaceful when the world had gone to shit. She felt as though she had walked into an episode of the _Twilight Zone_ , seeing the neighborhood with cars still parked in driveways and dead Christmas lights draped over windows and shrubs.

She turned the key in the ignition and shut the car off, instantly missing the hum of the engine, which lent some noise to an otherwise silent morning. Looks were deceptive, she decided, glancing at the doors that led into the building lobby. Max almost expected a yellow school bus to pull up and for to Jack to come running out with his backpack. People would be heading off to work. Joggers would trot on by. And the world would go on, crawling at a steady pace that dictated the lives of so many, families, kids, men, women…human beings.

But all that was gone now and the graveyard stillness of the neighborhood seemed like a testament in its own right, a sign that man, with his skyscrapers and wireless internet and atom bombs, was fragile. Disposable, really.

"God," Max whispered, sitting back in her seat. "God," she said again, this time in prayer.

In all her life, Max had never doubted that God existed, but now, she felt as though she were only just beginning to believe. And that belief did not exactly bring her comfort. Not yet, anyway.

The air inside the squad car started to feel stale, the sun hitting the windshield, making her blink. Max groaned, her lingering concussion reacting to the sharp light. Reaching over with her good hand, she opened the car door and stepped out onto the curb. She was halfway across the street when she realized that she had left the door wide open with the keys sticking out of the ignition. And even though the neighborhood was pretty damn quiet, Max knew enough not to tempt any wannabe thief who might be lurking behind someone's manicured hedges.

"Dumb fuck," she scolded herself, retrieving her keys and locking the car. Her momentary lapse in judgment had inadvertently provided Max with a much needed distraction. She hadn't actually considered what she was about to do and now the realization hit her, threw a kink into her otherwise detached sensibilities.

_I'm returning to the scene of the crime_, she thought as she walked up the pathway to the building. Dried leaves snapped and crunched beneath her hesitant footfalls. _I'm going back to the place where I killed my sister. I must be sick. I must be crazy. What if the body is still there?_

But it wasn't. Max spent a long minute peering inside the lobby doors before she dared to go in. Through the glass panes, she could see the row of metal mailboxes and the elevator and the hallway that led to the stairs and the laundry room. The floor was also within view and although Max saw a great patch of blood on the tiles, which made her gut tighten with a sickening twist, she didn't see her sister's corpse.

That was a relief…or was it? Where was Laurie's body now? Had some good Samaritan dragged it off somewhere? Or maybe Laurie herself hadn't been killed when Max had shot her. Maybe she was still out there, hurt, suffering…

But no. Gabriel had told her that Jack was in Heaven with his mother. Laurie was dead. She was at peace.

And Max was still a murderer.

"Prophet," she muttered derisively, as she pushed the lobby doors open. "Yeah, right."

Once inside the building, Max figured that the logical next step would be to go up to Laurie's apartment. She knew she wouldn't find anything of use there, save for a few painful reminders of the life she had left behind and the life that had been cruelly taken from her. It was amazing how attractive the old status quo could become once she didn't have it anymore.

The elevator wasn't working, so Max opted for the stairs and God, it was a hike and a half trying to make it up the three flights. Pausing to rest on a landing, she smiled at herself, realizing just how banged up she really was. A couple of weeks ago, she and her partner Joe would have bounded up twice as many flights to get to a call. But a lack of food, sleep and two irksome injuries had nearly done Max in, and she felt like an old woman huffing and puffing her way up each step.

Laurie had lived on the third floor in a nice corner apartment. Max had to walk down a long hallway to get to it and as her heavy footsteps resonated off the slate grey walls, she thought of all the times Jack had come running out to meet her. As a little kid, he'd loved bragging about his aunt, the cop, and for kicks, Max would always wear her LAPD uniform when she'd come to visit him. Back in those days, Jack used to tell her how much cooler she was than his mom, who was only a boring lawyer, and how he wanted to grow up to be a fireman so that he and Max could rescue people together. He'd always been so proud of her, that kid. He'd always made her feel special and important and loved…

"Jack." Max almost broke down crying as she stood in the hall. It was one thing to look at the grave back at the ranch and know, but it was worse being there, waiting for a six-year-old Jack to come sprinting around the corner, squealing, "Aunt Max! Aunt Max!" And Max would catch him up in her arms, his whole giggling, squirming body and she would pretend for a moment that he was hers, her son. She would just pretend.

"God," Max muttered, realizing that she had started praying again. Her heart was slamming against her ribcage and her body felt shaky, her legs as weak as water. With some difficulty, she managed to pull herself back together and stagger along.

Once she had made it down the last stretch of the hall, it occurred to her then that she didn't have a key to get inside the apartment and she didn't really feel up to busting down the door. Surprisingly, however, the knob turned easily when she twisted it. The lock clicked and gave way. Before she knew it, Max was standing inside the apartment and oh, nothing had changed. Nothing at all.

She had wanted things to be different, though. That would make it easier, if she could come back to a foreign place and not recognize anything. The familiarity of the apartment, however, was devastating. Max felt as though she had not even left. She felt as though she had blinked her eyes and ended up back in the place she had started from, on a night when the world was ending and her sister was lying dead in the lobby and the only thing Max cared about was Jack, the boy she wanted to be her son.

Perhaps she shouldn't have come there. Perhaps she should have stayed at the ranch where she could air her grief properly by Jack's grave, where she had angels who would take care of her and one who thought he loved her.

But even now, standing amidst the wreck and ruin that was her life, Max felt like she had somehow avoided cowardice. The pain of this homecoming was necessary in a way, a process that might not be cleansing, but made her feel productive nonetheless. Driving around L.A. seemed much better than sitting stale and stagnant back at the ranch, where she could easily let the cobwebs of sorrow tangle around her heart until it was possible for her to move at all.

But she was moving now. She wasn't running away but running towards something. Something, something…

_Prophet._

Without thinking, Max hurried out of the foyer, through an arched doorway and into the living room. She was somewhat shocked to see the Christmas tree still standing in the corner and she remembered that it had only been a couple of days before the holiday when life itself had fallen apart. Well, it was the Christmas tree that was falling apart now. Her sister had always insisted on getting a real tree every year, even though Max told her that they were expensive and a fire hazard. The supposedly evergreen branches were brown now, all but stripped bare of their sticky little pine needles. A string of lights and some tinsel dangled limply from the boughs and a few of the heirloom ornaments Laurie had inherited from their grandmother laid smashed all over the hardwood floor.

Max grimaced, hating the scene for its sick irony. She turned away from the tree, mostly because she couldn't bear to look at the angel perched on top of it. The smiling, plastic figurine reminded her of Gabriel in the worst way possible and she didn't want to think of him just then. This moment, she decided, belonged to her alone. It was a time of self-reflection, of thoughts that were empty but hers nonetheless, of memories that she wanted to keep close to her heart, where no one else could get to them.

Not even him. Not even Gabriel, who had dared to give her everything…

Max put her back to the Christmas tree and surveyed the rest of the apartment. There was a Menorah sitting on the faux fireplace, because Laurie's husband came from a Jewish family and although he wasn't serious about his faith, he couldn't quite let go of it…just like Max, who needed to have her St. Michael medal.

The living room opened up into several other rooms, the floor plan of the apartment being quite spacious. Max remembered how her sister used to make a big deal over the flow and energy of her home. It was all some sort of Feng shui crap that Max knew was bullshit, but always let her sister go on and on about anyway. The living room led directly into a small breakfast nook that had French doors and looked out over a terrace. She paused for a minute to finger the breezy, gauzy curtains that hung over the window, savoring the soft touch of the silky fabric against her skin. It almost felt like one of Gabriel's feathers, she thought. It almost felt like-

And that's when she heard it. A cough. A groan. There was someone in the apartment. In an instant, Max's fanciful nostalgia vanished and she had her gun out of its holster.

_Still quick to the draw_, she thought. _Although maybe I'm getting a little trigger happy._

Because her right wrist was still wrapped in a bandage and almost too stiff to move, Max was forced to hold her firearm in her left hand. She felt considerably less confident with it there, but all she needed was to be able to get off one shot, one good, clean shot.

Feeling like she was back on the beat again, Max slipped out of the breakfast nook and into the kitchen. To her surprise, the room had been completely ransacked. The refrigerator door was open and all the counter drawers were pulled out onto the floor. Empty water bottles had been carelessly thrown into the corner by the stove and a few pieces of moldy bread still sat in their plastic wrapping on top of the expensive chrome microwave.

Max herself had raided the kitchen for the essentials when she'd picked up Jack, but she certainly hadn't left it so messy. Someone else must've broken into the apartment and tried to steal what was left. Or maybe, just maybe, that someone was still crashing there now and she'd have a hostile squatter to deal with.

For some reason, the notion didn't exactly terrify her, even though she knew she was quite alone and completely without back-up. It was strangely exhilarating to be playing the role of cop again and Max rejoiced in the familiar. It gave her something to hold onto, just a little part of those old days, when her nephew had been so proud of her.

_For Jack_, she thought, steadying her left hand. _This is for Jack._

Max left the kitchen and went out into the hallway. The corridor had two doors on each side, a pair of closets, Jack's bedroom and the bathroom. At the very end of the hall sat the master bedroom and Max was tempted to start there, but she patiently worked her way through the other four first. It was tense work, opening each door as quietly as she could, mindful of all the creaking hinges and the squeaking floorboards. Jack's room was the last place Max looked and that one was hard, not because she thought a possible assailant might be lurking inside, but because she knew her nephew _wouldn't_ be there. His things were, though. His bed and TV and Xbox. The action figures he had already outgrown and the telescope he used more for spying on the neighbors than for stargazing.

Max forced herself not to linger. She needed to stay alert and she needed to stay focused. She still had the master bedroom left and something told her that this one would be the prizewinner. In her mind, she imagined a cheesy game show host calling out, "Is there anything behind door number five?"

"A new car," Max replied with a half-grin. She held her gun out in front of her, perspiration beading her brow. This was it, this was it…

Max took a deep breath. And then she raised her leg, kicking the door open as she shouted, "Police!"

The bed was right in front of her and a figure stirred on the mattress. A head popped up off of a pillow.

"Max?" the voice was an awed whisper.

And despite all her training, despite fourteen years on the force and her own sense of cautious paranoia, Max did something no cop would do. She dropped her gun.

"Brian?"

It was like seeing a ghost. It was like coming across Lazarus staggering forth from his tomb, still wrapped in his heavy burial shroud with the dust of the dead on his flesh.

Max almost began to cry, looking at her brother-in-law's familiar face. He was Laurie's husband. He was Jack's father. He was her last tie to a life she had all but left behind.

She trembled. She brought her hand up to her face and felt the hot tears on her cheeks. "Brian," she said, unable to withhold a grateful sob, a cry of pure, joyous relief, "I thought you were dead."

"Ugh," he groaned in response, throwing his head back onto the pillow, his unkempt hair falling over his sweaty forehead. "Not yet, Maxie. God it's good to see you, sweetheart. God, oh God."

Brian's voice broke and he started to cry, his body all curled up as he laid on his side, heaving.

And Max wondered why he didn't get up to greet her, why he just laid there, his hands fisted tightly in the blankets.

Something was wrong. She should have realized it the moment she stepped into the room, but her happiness had been too wild, too overwhelming. The air in the bedroom was fetid, infused with a slightly rotten odor that promised fleshly decay. Max's empty stomach immediately contracted and she gagged. Looking about, she saw a bottle of antiseptic on the floor by a wilted potted plant. There was a half-used roll of paper towels on the nightstand, some bloodied tissues, a jar of peanut butter and a package of saltines. Brian himself was wearing a stained t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants that Max noticed were soiled. The stench of urine reached her and she gagged again.

"Fuck!" Brian tossed his head fitfully on the pillow. Rolling onto his back, he revealed a whiskey bottle tucked by his side. There were only a couple of ounces of the amber liquor left, but Brian clutched at the neck of the bottle as though it were his only lifeline.

And just as quickly as it had overcome her, Max felt her joy begin to cede to a sickly sort of understanding. Something was wrong here. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

"Don't you think it's a little early to be hitting the sauce?" Max quipped, attempting to inject some levity into her tone even as Brian thrashed about on the bed.

"C'mon, Max," he coughed. "You know I hate whiskey. It's for the pain. The Motrin in the medicine cabinet doesn't work and I needed…fuck."

"All right, take it easy," she soothed, stepping closer to the bed. "Brian, I need you tell me what's going on here."

It was an oft repeated line for Max, something she had used over and over again to calm hysterical witnesses or crime victims. Spouting the familiar cop lingo made her feel in control now, as though she could manage a situation that was otherwise dreadful.

Brian rolled his eyes in her direction, the whites showing around his dilated pupils. His skin was an awful shade of mottled grey.

"Are you alone?" Brian asked desperately. "Is your partner with you? Do you think you can call me an ambulance? I tried dialing 911. No one's answering, though. There's no one, Max. I don't think there's anyone even left alive."

"There's me," Max said automatically. She was leaning over the bed now, nauseated by what she knew was the stench of death. Max had unfortunately encountered it before at numerous crime scenes and at the coroner's office. And although she had learned not be squeamish, she could not ignore the sense of rising fear, the shrill warning that told her someone she cared about was in danger.

Brian's left leg was stretched out on the sheets, a blanket covering it up to the knee. Max steadied herself. The odor seemed to be coming from there.

"I tried to call for help," Brian said, his words starting to slur. "But there's no one in the building and I can't walk far, I can barely make it to the bathroom anymore. Max…oh God, you've got to stop!" he shrieked when she lifted back the blanket and Max herself almost screamed when she saw what lay underneath.

His leg was obviously broken, the femur shattered and she thought she could see a hint of white bone protruding from a laceration in his shin. There was some discharge by the gash, a revolting pus and the skin below, on his calf, on his ankle, on his foot, was black.

_Gangrene_, Max thought, remembering a video her history teacher had once shown her class back in high school. Civil war soldiers developed gangrene when their wounds became infected and field surgeons, wearing their finest butcher aprons, hacked off dying limbs indiscriminately.

Max swallowed, all too aware of the bile rising in her throat. She leaned against the side of the bed, Brian's screams still echoing in her ears. But her brother-in-law was quiet now, his breathing shallow and quick.

"How long," Max started, but had to stop when a wave of wretched dizziness rushed over her. "How long have you been like this?"

"Since that night," Brian said weakly.

Max needed no further explanation. She understood. That night, that night when the world had ended and angels fell from the heavens…

_Gabriel._

Max shut her eyes. For some reason, she couldn't help but think of him.

Brian was moving about on the bed again. Max could hear the mattress springs creaking and she nearly jumped a foot in the air when he grabbed her hand.

"Max," he said, his fingers hot and sticky as they folded over her palm. "Max, it was Laurie…that night."

"Laurie," Max choked on her sister's name, remembering that puddle of dried blood in the lobby. "Laurie, she's-"

"She's gone, I know," Brian replied, his voice surprisingly even. "I'm not sure what happened to her, Max. She tried to kill me. My wife…"

"It's all right," she echoed lamely, squeezing Brian's hand as much as she dared. His grip was so weak, she thought he might fall apart if she touched him, like the dead Christmas tree out in the living room. His pallid cheeks were damp with fever and he coughed dryly every time he tried to talk. _Not much longer_, instinct told Max. _He's dying right in front of your eyes._

And what could she do? What could she possibly do about it? Max was a natural born problem solver, the kind of person who knew how to make the best lemonade out of the worst lemons. She could improvise. She could compromise. She could sit down and figure this out.

Getting Brian down the stairs to the squad car would be a challenge. Max had barely made it up the three flights herself and she knew she wouldn't be able to support his dead weight with only one good arm. But if she somehow managed to guide him down the stairs, then what? A hospital was out of the question and it was a five hour drive back to the old horse farm, a torturous, five hour journey that she'd have to make with not enough gas and Brian stretched out in the backseat, his leg nothing but rotten flesh, fever burning, the pain. And what would be his reward for toughing out the horrendous ordeal? Would Michal, playing the Civil War surgeon, amputate his leg while Gabriel held him down? Would he die there in some makeshift triage and be buried next to his son, both parent and child reunited in what could only be tragic irony.

Max bit her lip, hating her own hopelessness. For once in her life, she would have given anything to be foolishly optimistic, to plough right on ahead without thinking things through, without second-guessing herself.

But she needed something of reality now. She needed to stand there with her two feet firmly planted on the floor and recognize what was happening. This man, this good, sweet man, was suffering. He was dying. Max couldn't save him. She could try, but would ultimately fail. And Brian deserved better than that. He deserved what his wife and son already had. He deserved peace.

Max blinked, trying to hide her tears from him. Her knees were weak and carefully, she sat on the very edge of the bed, still holding his hand.

"Tell me," she said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say, "tell me what happened that night. How did-"

"Laurie," he whispered.

"I know, but-"

"It was about two o'clock in the morning," Brian continued, "when I woke up that night." His thin chest heaved with every painful inhalation and Max thought she could almost see his ribs sticking out underneath his t-shirt.

God, it was awful.

"Laurie wasn't in bed," he said, "and I couldn't go back to sleep. There were…there were a lot of sirens in the streets. And your sister and I, we always get a little nervous when we hear sirens, mostly because of you, Max. Laurie always thinks that something bad has happened, that you're out there getting your ass shot up and she's going to have I.D. her sister at the morgue. We worry about you…but I wasn't exactly worried that night. I was almost, I don't know, tense. Restless. I laid in bed for awhile, waiting for Laurie to come back…thought maybe, maybe she was in the kitchen getting some water, she always gets thirsty at night…I waited for maybe fifteen minutes, but she never came back. And a bunch of crazy ideas started running through my head. I thought maybe something _did_ happen. Something not too good."

Brian stopped, exhaling through his mouth. There were white flecks at the corners of his lips and his skin was badly chapped, cracked and bleeding in some places. "That's when I went looking for her," he said. "I just couldn't go back to sleep, Max, the sirens." He paused again and tried to wet his lips, but his tongue was papery. "I checked in on Jack first. He was still sleeping. Laurie wasn't in the apartment, so then I began to think that she was outside sneaking a smoke. I know she tries to hide it from me…she thinks I care, but I don't, I love her. I went out into the hallway and I was going to take the elevator down, but I heard someone in the stairwell. That's got to be her, right? It was her, Max. It was her, only she was…her eyes."

"I know," Max said abruptly. She had noticed Brian's gaze glazing over as her spoke, his words drifting, becoming soft and obscured. She tightened her fingers over his, her mind blurring with anticipated sorrow. It was coming. God, it was coming.

And she was helpless.

_Don't leave me_, she begged silently, looking at his ashen skin and feverish eyes and wildly dilated pupils. _Don't leave me, Brian. Not yet._

_Not yet…_

Brian swallowed, his Adam's apple bobbing. A bead of sweat dripped down his noise and into the little well of flesh above his lip. "I can't remember much after that. I think I said something to Laurie. I was probably trying to bust her chops about smoking, but then she snapped. She…she tried to bite me. We were on the top of the stairs and I had my arms folded against her chest. I was just trying to restrain her, I didn't want to hurt her, Max, you know I wouldn't hurt her, but she was strong. So Goddamned strong. And then she just pushed me. I fell from the top step and I must've been knocked out, because I was lying on my back at the bottom when I woke up and my leg."

He looked hopelessly down at his body and in seeing his calm expression, Max had the urge to shield him from it all, from reality, which was relentless. From the great human toll of this tragedy, which was perhaps more evident to her than it was to him.

But there was nothing she could do, really. Her role as protector had been reduced to that of comforter, to that of the bedside mourner who could only stand and watch the last struggle, the final journey. And death itself was always near, always circling. It made Max feel very sorry for herself, because she knew that once it was over, she'd be alone again.

How much longer did he have left?

Brian closed his eyes slowly and for a perilous instant, Max thought he was already gone. But his heart still beat strong in his wrist when she put her fingers to it and she gave into a foolish hope, wondering if he could possibly survive, if any of them could…

Brian's eyes fluttered open, blue veins showing against his bruised lids. "It was strange," he rasped, "how quiet everything was when I woke up. There were no sirens, no people out in the streets, just this dead silence. No one came when I called for help. No one, Max. After a while, I managed to drag myself out into the lobby and that's when I saw Laurie. Your sister…she was lying dead by the door. Someone shot her. And they just left her there. I didn't know what to do, but she was staring at me with those eyes and her mouth open and her teeth. There was blood…I don't know, somehow I managed to push myself up against the wall, my leg wasn't that bad then and I dragged her into the laundry room. It was as far as I could take her and I hated having to leave her, no cover for her face or anything."

Max's throat clenched as she listened to him speak. She had to look away so that Brian wouldn't see her tears. She couldn't help but picture him limping down the lobby hall, his leg broken, dragging Laurie behind him. His pain, his incredible agony was obviously insignificant when it came to his wife and Max realized then just how much Brian had loved her sister. He'd put his own survival and safety on the back burner just so her corpse wouldn't have to lay out in the open like that, prone to all the humilities death and rot visited upon the flesh.

And Max began to wish, not for the first time, that she had someone like that in her life. That she had someone like…

_Gabriel._

Max shook her head, the tiny movement a physical manifestation of her rejection, her denial. She was like a snake trying to shed its uncomfortable skin. Avoidance was a game and she played it well. Too well, maybe.

But Brian's selflessness was enough to distract her from her own individual misery. It almost opened her heart, with its burden of sin and black secrets. She considered telling him then it had been all her fault, that _she_ was the reason he had been forced to pull his wife's body down a hall and leave her in a dingy laundry room. But this moment was for Brian's comfort, not her own, and she couldn't appease her guilt by hurting him. The only way to honor his selflessness was by abandoning her own selfishness, by somehow becoming a better woman.

Brian made her want to do that. And Jack. And Gabriel.

Of course, she reasoned, it might all be about Gabriel…

Brian began to cough then, the sound high-pitched and hacking. A thrill of fear raced along Max's spine and she looked wildly around the room, as if someone would pop up out of the ground and run to her rescue.

"Do you want some of the whiskey?" Max asked when he didn't stop coughing. She reached for the bottle.

"No," Brian gasped. He pushed her hand away. "Listen, Max," her brother-in-law continued, although it seemed increasingly difficult for him to speak. His words were accompanied by a low whistling sound. "I was able to get back to the elevator, the electricity was still on then, and I made it to the apartment. When I was inside, I started screaming for Jack, but he didn't come. He's gone…my son, Max, he's gone…"

The torment was nearly unbearable. Max had to bite down hard on her lip to keep from crying out. Brian was right, of course. Jack was gone, gone forever. And that had been her fault too, her own sorry, damn fault and Max wanted to start screaming then. She wanted the world to hear what she had done and she wanted Brian to know, so he could either hate her or forgive her. Probably hate her, probably never forgive her.

Max looked at him. She had already decided. She had already made up her mind.

"No, Jack's not gone," she said quickly, offering him a smile that was too bright. "I have him, Brian. I should have told you right away. It's all right, I've got him."

"You…you've got Jack?" Brian was so elated he almost managed to sit up. His face was drenched with sweat and his jaw clenched, but God, he looked so happy. So damn happy. "Where is he? Is he with you?"

"No." Max gently guided him back down onto the pillow. "But I was here that night. I left my post when everything started to go to shit and I meant to grab all of you and run, but you and Laurie were gone when I got here. I found Jack in the apartment and I took him right out of the city. We've been holed up on Grandma's old horse farm in the Mojave. God Brian, if only I had known you were lying in that stairwell. I'm so sorry, I'm-"

But Brian was shaking his head wildly. "It doesn't matter, Max. it doesn't matter. Jack is safe!"

Her heart froze. "Yeah."

"And he's still on the ranch now?"

"Yeah…he's with friends."

It wasn't exactly a lie, Max reasoned, her mind desperately trying to worm its way out of her guilt. Jack _was_ safe, according to Gabriel. In fact, he was probably a hell of a lot better off then she could ever be…or ever would be again.

The back of her throat was dry and she swallowed, the veins in her neck aching when realized she was still holding back tears. And Brian was crying too, his chest heaving with both sobs and weak laughter.

"I can't tell you what it means to me," he wept, "I can't tell you what it means to me as a father. I've been here all this time, thinking that my kid is out there somewhere, being hurt. You won't believe this, Max, but there were times when I almost wished that Jack was dead. I'd know then that he wasn't in pain. It sounds sick, but-"

"No." Max looked away from him and across the room. She picked a spot on the wall to stare at and steadied herself, forced her mind to empty before another tidal wave of grief could overwhelm her. She had to be strong. She had to protect Brian. She had to be….

_Prophet._

"I still feel like I failed him, though," Brian was saying, his voice thin and drawn out, like a quiet death rattle. "I'm his dad, I should've…I should've…"

"Don't," Max said. She touched his shoulder The flesh was soft, the skin stretched tightly over the brittle bone.

Brian's breathing was very labored now. He folded his hand against his breastbone and rubbed his chest. "You've got to get me out of her, Max. I need to go to the hospital. It's like a miracle, you coming back."

_Yes_, she thought. _This is a miracle._

"What the hell brought you all the way back to L.A.?" Brian asked. His head had rolled to the side and his was pressed against the pillow. "Are you still with your precinct? Did the city call the police out?"

"No," Max said softly. She realized then what a mockery it was for her to be standing there in her uniform, when civilization had come crashing down and humanity itself had been reduced to its lowest level, to dying alone in an abandoned apartment building without any help and only a bottle of cheap whiskey for comfort.

Max knew then that there had been absolutely no meaning to her life up until that point. It meant nothing, her gun, her badge, her B.A. in history and even her family, all of whom had died around her. The world didn't need a person like her anymore, it needed a…

_Prophet._

"What about the National Guard?" Brian asked and Max hated the renewed hope in his voice. "The Army? Is there anyone out there yet?"

"No," Max echoed. She took his hope for what it was, the very last of mankind's resilience and tucked it away in her heart. "No, it's just me."

She didn't look at Brian when she spoke, because she couldn't bear to see the disappointment in his eyes. The silence between them was heavy and Max felt as though she would suffocate. Wincing, she raised her bad hand to wipe the sweat from her brow and that's when she saw him begin to thrash about. The bed jolted, the box spring groaning as Brian threw his head onto the pillow, his eyes rolling back in his head.

_God, not yet._

"Brian!" Max screamed. She didn't know what to do. She was scared. She was a child in the dark. Not a prophet. Not a protector. And the world was dying around her and Brian, he was dying too.

"Brian," she sobbed his name as she tried to lift him up, but his weight was too much for her to bear and he only sagged against her chest.

"Max," he said, his eyes opened wide, oh God, too wide. He was staring over her shoulder. "Max, there's an angel."

And he died like that, in her arms. She tried to hold his spirit in her eyes, but it passed from him and he was husk. A corpse. Lazarus before his glorious resurrection.

Max let him go. She laid him back down on the pillow and closed his eyes and pulled a blanket over his body. And only when she was done did she turn around to see him, her angel, standing there in the bedroom doorway.

"I didn't call for you," Max told him.

"I know," Gabriel replied. "But I came anyway."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks for reading! Please leave a review if you have the time. I truly appreciate any and all feedback I receive, and reviews make me unbelievably happy.

In the next chapter, Gabriel makes good on his promise to guide the prophet. Max finally realizes her true purpose in L.A. and vows to correct at least one of her many wrongs. Chapter twenty-three is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. I hope you all have a lovely weekend! Take care and be well!


	23. Chapter Twenty Three Crossing the Border

**Author's Note: **This chapter is slightly shorter than usual, but since the next installment is going to be quite long, I thought I should break things up a little.

And wow, you guys, I can't get over all the amazing reviews I received for the last chapter. Thank you **saichick, FyreFly, ArmoredSoul, SailorMoon20114486, Lexicon, ScrimjaNinja, WolfenIvy **and **Melissa.** And thank you to everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts list so far. You guys really made my week. ^_^ I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-Three Crossing the Border**

Max sat on the sofa in the living room, the dried pine needles from the dead tree sticking to her shoes and pants. Her hands were shaking terribly and to give them something to do, she slipped the clip out of her gun, letting the mag roll around in her palm which was still warm from the touch of Brian's flesh. She didn't have many tears, really, because it seemed useless to sit there and cry over someone she had believed to be already dead. And it was hard for her to understand just how alone she was in the world, how completely alone. The whole thing, she thought, was rather ironic, considering she had always cherished solitude.

Max sighed, sliding the clip back into the gun. She switched the safety on and stuck her firearm into the holster on her belt. There was a dead silence in the apartment. A dead, damned silence.

"I'm not going to bother with burying his body," Max said. She could have been talking to herself, but she wasn't.

Gabriel stood within the arched doorway, his towering frame accentuated by the otherwise low ceilings. He was a figure of definite black in a world of pastels. Laurie had always favored light colors and her living room was painted a vague, sage green. Gabriel looked like an immovable boulder, a hard, unforgiving stone in a world that was gentle… or had been gentle, for a while.

Max noticed his eyes trailing over to the Christmas tree. He had spotted the angel.

"Do you think it's wrong of me, to not even try?" she asked. She was testing the distance between them, the divide that had sprung up when she had unexpectedly abandoned him back at the ranch with only a note scribbled on a piece of paper towel. That had been coldhearted. That had been cruel.

Gabriel tore his eyes away from the gaudy decoration and considered her. The frown on his face was soft and he seemed to crack a little, as if the great boulder had been rattled by an earthquake.

Max wondered if he was tired. He looked tired.

"What becomes of the corporal body is inconsequential," he said in the voice of a bored scholar reading out of a remembered text. "The spiritual body alone holds significance."

"That's a very safe response," Max replied. She fiddled with the gauze bandage wrapped around her wrist and tried to move her stiff, sore fingers. "But it doesn't really answer my question."

Gabriel turned, putting his right shoulder to her. With a jolt, Max realized he was reaching for the plastic angel still sitting atop the tree. "Yes," he said, plucking the ornament from the branch, "this moment _is_ for answering questions."

Max's mouth dropped open. She was going to say something obnoxious, but she held her tongue. There was something wretchedly poetic in watching Gabriel hold the fake angel, but she was too tired to read into the overblown symbolism.

Instead, she turned her gaze away and looked at the floor. Her sister had once been such a neat freak, but now there were pine needles everywhere, in the cracks between the boards, in the delicate fringe of the area rug, in the slightly shadowed space under the coffee table. For some reason, Max had the insane urge to grab a broom and start sweeping. It would be a small act, an attempt to put right what seemed so wrong. But when she considered the state of the rest of the city, hell the rest of the world, it seemed foolish. There was very little that one person could do to fix _that_ horrible mess. Or maybe there was nothing at all.

"What happened to Brian's spiritual body?" she asked. When Gabriel didn't answer, Max forced herself to look up. She was pleased to see that he had put the angel down on the faux fireplace, next to the Menorah.

"I cannot tell you," he said curtly. "My vision of Paradise is obscured from this mortal realm. If I were on the other side, I could very well lead Brian's soul to peace myself, but here I can only guess."

"Then guess," Max responded, injecting a little heat into her voice. She wasn't sure why she felt the need to be so guarded around Gabriel, so cautious and prickly. It didn't really make sense, considering…

_Max, I think I am in love with you._

She frowned.

"I saw his eyes only briefly," Gabriel replied. He was pacing closer to her, his heavy boots shaking the glass in the coffee table. Max wondered what the neighbors downstairs would think, but then she remembered that there weren't any neighbors left.

"The soul can be glimpsed through the eyes," he continued. He was less than a foot away from her and for the first time in a long while, Max felt a tiny thrill of fear race through her.

Gabriel was imposing. And he was frightening now, in some indefinable way. Frightening because he was unfamiliar. Distant. And his voice sounded like an echo, not the full-bodied tone she had come to know, had come to love, when he spoke to her, blessing her with words that she thought might be too good for her profane ears.

For Max, the issue of worth was still a significant one. She could not reconcile her own inherent weakness with Gabriel's strength. The divide between them was obvious and it perplexed her now to see Gabriel standing before her, his bearing that of the willful supplicant. It was wrong, she knew. It was all wrong, although the angel himself did not seem to realize it.

Max wondered if he ever would.

She set her jaw, aware of the vicious ache in her neck. "I've heard that before," she said. "That's old news."

"I glimpsed something of Brian's soul," Gabriel said. He stopped moving, halting by the curved arm of the sofa.

Max's flesh began to crawl. She had forgotten, in such a short space of time, what it was like to be close to him.

"I glimpsed something of Brian's soul," he repeated gravely, "and what I saw looked like Jack."

"Jack." The name broke the ice between them. Max's hands finally stopped shaking. She thought of Brian's eyes, which were just like her nephew's. His soft, gentle eyes.

"Gabriel," she said, her voice ringing hollow in her throat, "what does my soul look like?"

The angel said nothing.

For that, Max was glad. It had been a stupid question to begin with. Leaning back against the downy cushions of the sofa, she tried to let her body relax, tried to unwind all the tense little knots that had worked themselves into her muscles and tightened around her bones. Max was tired. Driving five hours nonstop and then spending another tooling around a ruined L.A. would have exhausted her on a good day, but there was a sort of spiritual malaise that accompanied her fatigue, a deadening of the soul which she thought Gabriel must recognize. Maybe that was why he seemed so chilly towards her now. Maybe he finally realized that she was beyond redemption, that she was the one straying sheep that the shepherd shouldn't chase after.

The thought had occurred to her on and off since Jack had died. Caring for the boy had been, for all intents and purposes, her single act of saving grave. Max could've counted herself worthy only because she had that kid with her, only because she was needed by someone. And that had given her life meaning. It was strange now that she thought about it, how necessary it was for life to have meaning. In the past, Max had never been one of those philosophical types, had never been one to try to "find" herself or reach out to a higher power. But despite the chip on her shoulder and despite her desperate attempts to flee from all that was worthwhile, her purpose, her higher calling had found her anyway. She had saved Jack. She had been his guardian, his keeper, his mother. But now, she had nothing.

Life was indeed meaningless again and Max reacted to the cold emptiness of it, the hopelessness. It was enough, just enough, to bring tears to her eyes.

"What the hell are you doing here?" she asked Gabriel, although even she wasn't naïve enough to believe that the question had been direct towards him.

He answered her anyway. "I came to help you."

"I don't need any help," Max shot back, although she knew her reply was thoughtless, a knee jerk reaction meant to disguise her own bewilderment.

To her surprise, Gabriel took her anger in stride. He even smiled a little. "I believe you humans have a word for that," he said, "I believe that's called bullshit."

"All right, fair enough," Max groaned. Slowly, she sat up and threw her body weight forward until she was leaning over her knees, staring at the pine needles on the floor again. Her head felt heavy and there was a subtle throb in her temple, a vein pulsing along in time to her heartbeat. Her mouth was dry and she was almost tempted to take a quick swig from Brian's whiskey bottle, although the morbidity of the mere notion repulsed her.

"How'd you find me?" she asked him. It was difficult to keep her expression casual with the angel looming over her. Max's eyelids were warm, her skin feverish and she thought the heat would betray her, would show Gabriel just how sick and lonely she felt, would show him how hopeless she really was. And then maybe he wouldn't have hope. Maybe he would be merciful and just let her go. It was easy to give up, after all, once you had decided upon it. It was easy to stop fighting, to release that tense knot in the stomach and let the body, both spiritual and physical, go under.

And Max was tired. She was very, very tired.

"You think you are a mystery," Gabriel replied. Shrugging off his usual courtesy, he lowered himself onto the sofa beside her, his wings immediately poking holes in the beige fabric.

Max grimaced, imagining what Laurie would say. The sofa was expensive. Custom-made, if she wasn't mistaken.

"You have this notion," Gabriel continued, the great weight of his body so close to her that Max could feel him breathing, "that you are unknown to me. You think we are strangers. You assume that there is a divide between us-"

"There is," Max insisted numbly.

Gabriel raised one dark eyebrow, but his face did not sharpen. Instead, his lips lifted and the skin over his eyes smoothed. Max found that she hated his impassive ease.

"It was not difficult to find you," he said slowly, patiently. "Where would you go besides this city?"

"Anywhere."

"I followed you. I followed your own instinct and I came to this _place_," he said, only a hint of distaste darkening his tone on the last word. "And when I was near, I heard your prayers. You were praying, weren't you, Max? You spoke to my Father, _our _Father and I listened. It was not hard to find you."

Max raised her good hand and rubbed her eyes vigorously. Some moisture trailed down to her cheeks and she sniffed, wishing that all that was left of her, all her lingering emotion, her final ties to the world, would leave. But it was hard to suppress human nature, even when life itself was faint and dying.

There was a spark still, that ever present desire to survive, to struggle and Max was driven to respond to it. She thought of Brian lying on his bed, fighting to the end, fighting to the very last breath left his body. She was shaming him now. And she was shaming herself.

"I bet you're pretty pissed off at me," Max said, "for running away like this." She dared to glance at Gabriel and was stunned when she did see some regret rise up in his face.

He was obviously trying to keep his features indifferent, but it was a battle he had already lost. Max saw that he was angry. He was very angry with her.

And she should have felt frightened. She should have felt daunted by his rage, but for some reason, it gave her courage. It was a spur. It was gasoline poured on a single cinder. It reminded her of why she had come all the way back to L.A., why, why…

Why _had_ she come back to L.A.?

"I was upset," Gabriel said and she was pleased to hear his steady voice waver a little. "I thought you did not care-"

"Maybe I don't-"

"For me," he finished. There was a hope in his eyes, the same hope Max had glimpsed in Brian before he died. She didn't have the heart to crush it, she realized. And she didn't have the right to.

"But I understand," Gabriel continued, "I understand this better than you do, Max. There are questions that must be answered. You did the right thing. You did the only thing. And it is not my place to be selfish and dissuade you. It is my place to guide you."

She knew then that he was going to touch her. There was just too much power in that big body of his and too little restraint. Max flinched when his fingers brushed across her forehead, lifting her dirty bangs and pushing them to the side. His flesh was calloused and it felt rough against hers, but good. She couldn't deny how good it felt.

"I'm sorry," she said, although she knew she was ruining the moment by speaking, "but I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"It does not matter." Gabriel's fingers lingered in the space between her right eye and temple.

Max swallowed. She was very close to feeling overwhelmed and the notion frightened her. She wondered what would happen if she actually did lose it. Would she cry? Or would she do something else, something worse, like grab onto him and refuse to let him go. He was so close to her now, reaching out and Max realized that he was right. There was no divide between them. And there never had been.

"Why did you come back to the city?" Gabriel asked her.

She spurned the question, if only because she did not have a ready answer. Or maybe she did have the answer, although she didn't dare voice it. That would be foolish. That would be dangerous. That would be…

_Prophet._

Max tried to look away from him, but Gabriel wouldn't let her. His fingers had trailed down to her chin and he held her face, his thumb pushed up against the side of her mouth.

"I am sorry, Max," he said and his determination was threatening, "but I cannot let you hide from this. It would be wrong of me."

"What?" She tried to pull away from him, but his grip was firm. Max squirmed.

"I know this is the worst of it," he said, "I know it would be easier for you to ignore-"

"Hey!" Max grabbed his hand and yanked, but Gabriel held her fast. With a sudden sinking feeling, she realized that he had planned this. Her trap. He had planned it all along.

Or perhaps it wasn't him. Perhaps she had been blind, a lost little lamb who couldn't look beyond her nose and see what had been lurking in the dark, what had been waiting for her throughout the long, wasted years of her life. Max thought of what lay behind her. She heard the echo of the countless seconds and heartbeats and individual breaths that made up her existence. She thought of being a kid and waiting for the ice cream truck with Laurie on a summer night back in her home in upstate New York. She thought of grammar school, which she had hated. She thought of high school, which had been worse and all the nameless faces of the teachers and kids she used to know but had now forgotten. She thought of the day when she first held a gun in her hand and realized that she would probably use it to kill someone else, someone like her, but only unfortunate enough to end up on the wrong side of the law. She thought of seeing that angel lying half-dead in the gully and how she wanted to leave him there and let him die.

It was possible, Max reasoned, that her all of her life, her entire life, had been leading up to this moment. That the seemingly useless occurrences of her childhood, of her adolescence, of her lonely adult years, had not been useless at all. There was a purpose behind everything. There was meaning. And she had that meaning now, but strangely enough, she found that she didn't want it.

This wasn't what she had been looking for. This wasn't what she had expected. And she was not going to have it forced on her. She was not-

"Please," Gabriel said, adding a plea to his desperation which made her skin crawl. "Acknowledge it."

But Max fought back. "No," she said.

His grip tightened on her jaw, hinting at his strength. But it was his spiritual force that Max found overwhelming, the wave that was relentless, all-consuming, a love that was perfect and unconditional.

_God_, she thought. _God, _she prayed.

"No!" she all but screamed at him.

And to her surprise, Gabriel screamed back. "Say it!"

"Prophet." The word slipped from her lips, earning its freedom from when it had buried itself in her heart long ago. To her surprise, she noticed the tears in her eyes, the ones she couldn't stop, couldn't shield, no matter how hard she tried. It was an ugly moment. Not beautiful. Not precious. It was pain and understanding, a double-edged sword that had somehow been forced into her hand, that she would be made to wield.

Somehow, somehow, He had chosen her.

And Max wasn't certain of a lot of things, but she knew, she just knew that He was making a mistake.

Gabriel let her go, his rough fingers soothing the bruised skin around her chin with a single, tender stroke. "Things will be better now," he said, speaking not in the voice of the angel, of the herald, but the lover.

Max shuddered. She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, but her denial was petulant, not founded in solid rage. "This," she said, the word catching in her throat because she was trying not to cry, "this, this is bullshit, Gabriel. This, this is your fucking bullshit right here."

"Then that is acceptable," he said. He tilted his head down when he spoke, his lips brushing her brow. "It's all right, Max."

"Oh, fuck you," she said. "Can you stop being so esoteric for a second? It's really pathetic."

"I am sorry." Gabriel offered her a smile that was lopsided, and Max felt, a little inappropriate for the moment. "But I am afraid you need me to be esoteric right now."

Max spat out another curse, planting the heel of her left palm against her eye. "I don't know what's going on here," she muttered. She felt as though she had suddenly gotten swept up in a sandstorm, as if the world itself were flying by her and she was trapped in the middle. And there was something she was supposed to do, something…something…

What?

"Max." Gabriel rested one of his large arms on her waist, his hand easily settling over her hip. His touch grounded her back in reality and that was comforting. Without meaning to, she leaned into him, accepting the closeness she had scorned. She had been wrong, she knew, to think that Brian was her last tie to the living world. Loneliness, although convenient to her black mood, was not hers to claim. There was someone else with her and she could not rightly be alone when he wanted to be with her.

"I want you to tell me," Gabriel said, his embrace warm and welcoming, "I want you to tell me why you came back to this place."

"I don't know," she mumbled faintly.

"You do know."

"Don't make me do this."

"I have to."

Max looked up at Gabriel, hoping to find the answer in his eyes, wondering if she could possibly see his soul. What she saw, however, was herself. Small and scared. Sitting there on Laurie's custom-made sofa that had been torn to shreds by his wings. Sitting there in her dirty uniform, with her shield still pinned hopefully to her chest.

She had the answer, she knew. She had had it all along.

"I came back to L.A.," Max said, letting her good hand curl around Gabriel's neck, "because Jack would have wanted me to."

"He would be proud of you," Gabriel said.

Max winced, but forced herself to continue. The hurt she felt was necessary, perhaps, something that she needed to experience to remind herself that she was still amongst the living. And as long as there was at least one survivor, there could still be hope.

"I came back to L.A.," Max said, "because I was tried of waiting."

"For?"

"For someone to do something," she answered. "For someone to just stand up and do something. I thought if I came back that I could…I could help. There were a lot of people I left behind in the city that night. People like Brian who had to suffer because I didn't stop to help them. People who had to die alone. I just keeping thinking, it isn't right, it isn't fair. There has to be someone out there who can do something. And then I got to L.A. and I realized that there was only me. It's just me."

Her tone was watery and her jaw felt loose when she moved it, her tongue forming each errant word, giving voice to each hidden thought before she could stop it. The silence around them was nearly impenetrable, a reminder that the world as she knew it had suddenly ceased to exist, that the streets were empty, that the homes were abandoned, that people had been left behind, good, innocent people. They'd just been left behind.

Like Brian. Like Joe, her partner, who had died screaming in the street, died screaming for help…her help.

_Oh God. _

Instinctively, Max pulled closer to Gabriel. "I had this partner," she told him. "His name was Joe Barlow and we'd been on the force together for I don't know how long. He was the kind of guy I wouldn't mind sticking my neck out for. He was the kind of guy I would run into gunfire with and not think twice about it. But that night, that night, Gabriel, I did think twice. He was in trouble and I left him there. I let him get killed. And he had a wife and two young kids. I could've at least gone for them, because I knew their daddy wasn't going to be there to protect them. I could've tried. It wouldn't have taken much to try." She paused, remembering the terrible position she had been placed in and how she wanted no part of this, how she needed her life to be meaningless so she could give up.

But it wasn't meaningless. Not even close.

"Why?" she asked, her voice a reverent whisper, "does it have to be me?"

Gabriel did not answer her right away. He let her heartbeat ring perilously in her ears for a few minutes and he let her breathing become quick and shallow before he spoke. His hand was still on her waist, right above her gun belt.

"Where," he said, "does this family you speak of live?"

"What?" Max shook her head, trying to rid her mind of the stupefying bewilderment that had taken hold, her own selfish, self-pity.

"Do you know where they live?"

"Yeah," she said, suddenly snapping to. "Uh, yeah. I used to go over to their house for barbeques all the time. I know where they live."

"We can find them, then," Gabriel said. He removed his hand from her waist, his bearing stiffening. He braced his hands on his thighs. "I will help you find them."

Max stared at him, her mouth open. "Gabriel, they must be dead. I can't…we wouldn't find anything if we looked."

"You cannot know that," he replied, pushing himself off the sofa. His feathers made a few fresh punctures in the fabric.

"I _do_ know that," Max replied. She had the sudden desperate need to make him understand, to show him what she had seen already, the empty streets, the burnt out buildings, the bodies. "There's nothing left here," she said.

Gabriel looked at her, his expression thoughtful. There was a flare of light behind his eyes and it reminded Max of the night she had brought him back to her garage, when she had been unable to look at him for long because he was so terrible and beautiful at the same time. It had started then, she realized. Beyond reason, beyond reality, she had loved him then.

And now.

Her heart thrilled when the angel smiled at her and she gave into the warm surge of affection his dutiful attention brought.

"Have faith," Gabriel told her.

And Max did. Slowly, she got to her feet, shaking off the last of her miserable apathy and remembering the time when her nephew had been proud of her, so proud.

She would have faith, she decided, if only because Jack would want her to. If only because he had always had faith.

Standing next to Gabriel, the shadow of his wings falling over her, his presence daunting but blessed, Max didn't know what to say. And so she kissed him instead.

For a moment, her hands wrapped around his neck and she pulled his head all the way down to meet hers and their lips touched. But it was a moment, just a moment.

When Max drew away from him, she had to smile, seeing that even he, an angel, could look wonder-struck.

"If you ask me why I did that," she said as she turned to go, "I'll only tell you that I don't know."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Thanks so much for reading! If you have the time, please leave a review. Feedback really means the world to me.

In the next chapter, a small band of survivors receive a visit from the most unlikely rescuers. Gabriel guides Max towards a decision that will forever change her life. Chapter twenty-four is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!


	24. Chapter Twenty Four Survivors & Martyrs

**Author's Note: **Sorry it took me a bit longer to get this installment posted, guys. I was under the weather this week and just couldn't find the time (or the energy) to revise this chapter right away. Thanks so much for your patience! And also thank you **Melissa, ArmoredSoul, Jack Of All Trades13, saichick, SailorMoon20114486, Farren Ouro, Lexicon **and **Tater Tots** for reviewing. Your feedback really means the world to me. I do hope you enjoy this chapter!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-Four Survivors and Martyrs **

It was a possibility Sarah Barlow never thought she would face. Her children were either going to be killed or starve to death. The mere idea of either outcome, which would have seemed so foreign two weeks ago, had gradually become a startling reality for the young mother. Her children, nine year old Alex and two year old Ashley, were either going to be killed or starve to death. They were either going to be killed or starve, but they would most definitely be taken from her.

And the only thing Sarah could really hope for, the only thing she could really pray for in the quiet moments she had to herself, was that they would all go together, mother and children. It would happen and it be over. Death would come and none of them would know the difference, because it would take them all. Or so she hoped. Or so she prayed.

_Please God, please._

The days were long now at St. Mary's High School, each aching hour reminding Sarah that it was terrible to be hungry and even worse to know that that hunger would most likely never be sated. Sitting on her single sleeping bag in the school's basement gymnasium, she kept her two children cuddled up close to her, although it was hard when she felt just how skinny they had both gotten in a matter of days.

Three days, to be exact. That's how long it had been since their carefully rationed food (most of it scavenged from the school's cafeteria) had started to run out. And now it was three days later, three days closer to the inevitable, to an end that was foreseeable but still obscure.

Sarah sat with her sore back pressed up against the padded gym wall, her legs crossed, Alex and Ashley both sharing her lap. She wasn't sure she knew how she wanted it to end, but it was becoming clearer, it was becoming increasingly evident, that she _wanted _that end to come.

_Please God, please._

Looking around the old gym, seeing the cots and the blankets and the odd debris of shelter life spread out on the once polished floor, Sarah tried to count how many survivors were left. She was surrounded by refugees, the homeless, people who had had their lives interrupted during the early morning hours of December 23rd. People who had been thrown out of reality and into a nightmare. People who had fled from their own homes, their safe houses with built-in security systems, to the only shelter they could find. People who were like her. People who were dying every day.

And most of them, she knew, were families too. Kids, parents, small, tight-knit groups that had survived something most of them couldn't comprehend and were now facing something even worse. Facing starvation and possibly disease and death, long, slow painful deaths.

If they weren't killed first, of course. If they weren't killed outright.

Sarah shut her eyes.

_God, please God. _

Thinking back, Sarah wondered if she had made the right decision to leave her little house and come to St. Mary's, the neighborhood high school that was quickly turning into a crypt. She too had been at home when it started, sitting up late in the living room watching a cooking show because she never could really sleep when she knew her husband Joe was out on patrol…not that she'd ever tell him that. The kids were both in bed and all the lights were out, expect for the glow that came off the TV and the strand of multi-colored bulbs strung around the tiny Christmas tree in the corner.

She had half a cup of coffee balanced on the arm of the couch and one of Ashley's baby afghans thrown over her lap and she'd just been sitting there, watching some smiling woman pipe icing onto holiday cookies when the world ended. It had just ended.

Sarah had been nearly scared out of her mind when the Emergency Broadcast System first scrolled across the top of the TV, especially when the eerie, monotone voice insisted that it wasn't a test. She remembered sitting bolt upright on the couch, her cold coffee sloshing around in the mug, her heart slamming against her chest until it was almost impossible to breath.

_Joe_, she thought first. Her husband. The father of her children. A cop. He was working the graveyard shift with his partner Max, a slightly morose, but dependable woman who didn't have much of a family or a life outside of her job.

Sarah sat on the edge of the couch, her coffee mug cradled between her two shaking hands. The woman on the cooking show was putting sprinkles on the cookies, but the sound had been muted and over her image blared the urgent message, "_This is not a test. Repeat, this is not a test._"

And then everything went black. The TV. The bulbs on the Christmas tree. The little blinking red light on the answering machine that reminded her that she had two messages to listen to. Sarah dropped her mug and it shattered by her feet, spraying coffee all over the bottoms of her pajama pants.

_Joe_, she thought, and then, _the kids._

She was off the couch and halfway through the living room when someone started rapping on the sliding glass door that led out into the backyard. Sarah jumped and spun around, pivoting on her bare feet. She had put their three dogs out in the kennel for the night, but they weren't barking now, weren't warning her about an intruder, and yet, someone was there.

Sarah backed up against the dining room table. Oh God, oh God, she was alone.

"Mrs. Barlow?" The voice was thin, but familiar.

She could just make out the figure through the blinds and lurching forward, she reached for the cord, pulling them back with a loud whiz.

"Harry?" she asked, peering through the glass.

Her old neighbor was standing there in her backyard, a flashlight in his hand. Sarah immediately breathed a sigh of relief. She knew Harry Swanson, the grouchy old widower from next door who was a Korean War vet and always complained if one of her dogs pooped on his sidewalk. But she was thrilled to see him now, the brilliant glow from his flashlight showing all the lines on his aged face.

Sarah let him in at once and shut the door behind him. "Is it a black-out?" she demanded.

He leaned against her couch, panting. "No," Harry wheezed, his flashlight jiggling in a palsied hand. "This is something else. Get the kids. We gotta go to St. Mary's High School."

"St. Mary's?" Sarah looked about her wildly, searching the dark for some meaningful assurance when she already knew there was none. "Why St. Mary's? That's ten blocks away."

"Because they have a fall-out shelter," Harry said.

The firm resolve in his voice chilled Sarah to the bone. Of course, she knew what a fall-out shelter was, but the words were uncomfortable, jarring her mind which was too young to remember the fully gravity of the Cold War and things like nuclear scares. Phrases like radiation and holocaust and Hiroshima flashed through her thoughts, but somehow, she managed to steady herself.

"Get the kids," Harry ordered just as the sound of whirring helicopter blades echoed overhead. "Get the kids now."

"Joe," Sarah whimpered helplessly, but she rushed down the hall to the children's bedroom. They were not hard to rouse, Alex already being awake and Ashley only groggy. Hurriedly, Sarah dressed them in the dark, all too aware of the sudden bursts of breaking glass and screams which eagerly pierced the night air. At the last minute, before rushing out to meet Harry, she tore one of Alex's drawings off his corkboard and wrote a note to Joe on the back with a crayon.

_Gone to St. Mary's HS. Please meet us there._

_Love,_

_Sarah and the kids_

Even as she scribbled the words, Sarah had an awful sinking feeling. She wondered if she was delusional thinking that Joe would ever get to read that note, but she hoped, nonetheless. She hoped.

Outside in the living room, Harry was still calling for them. Sarah scooped a crying Ashley up into her arms and dragged Alex along by the hand. Somewhere off in the street a car slammed on its brakes. Tires squealed. Metal crashed into metal. And there were sirens, yes, sirens. Sarah thought she could hear them a few blocks away. They belonged to fire trucks, maybe. Or police cars…

_Joe._

"My keys!" she cried as she hurried down the hall. "Harry, I can't find my keys!"

Sarah rounded the corner and found her old neighbor standing by the sliding glass door. He had it halfway open and he was still waving his flashlight at her. The beam hit Ashley in the face and she screamed, burying her head in Sarah's shoulder.

"Saw some keys on the dining room table," Harry muttered. "Come on, honey, we gotta go. We gotta-"

He didn't finish, but his body jerked wildly, his chest slamming into the glass door. It was if someone was trying to rip him in two they were pulling him so hard, but old Harry was tougher than he looked.

Raising his hand with the flashlight, he beat his attacker over the head, his spindly arm with the faded US Army tattoo rising and falling.

Sarah's mouth dropped and she pressed her children as close to her as she could, Alex squirming against her leg.

Someone screamed, the animalistic howl breaking off into a low, gurgling moan. Harry threw himself back inside the house and slammed the door closed. There was blood on his face when he looked on Sarah. God, there was blood.

Sarah stared at him, a sob choking her. The children were shaking, she could feel them and Ashley was holding onto her neck so tight she almost couldn't breath.

Harry's eyes met hers. "You run," he said. "You get them kids out of here-"

And that was the last thing he said to her, the last thing he said at all. The sliding door suddenly burst open behind him and there was a deadly shower of glass. Arms reached through and pulled at Harry and then he was gone, just gone.

Sarah stood staring at the empty space for a second, at the long shards of glass on the living room floor, at the spattering of blood. And then she did what Harry told her to. She grabbed her keys and took her kids and she ran. She went to St. Mary's.

It had been nearly two weeks since that night, or so Sarah estimated. Locked away in the gym/fall-out shelter with the few remaining neighborhood families who had managed to make their way to safety, she found it difficult to judge time. Days were a blur and moments blended one into the next, until all she was aware of was the heavy weight in her chest, the burden of knowledge that pushed her to consider the unfathomable.

Somehow, the world had ended. Somehow, life as she knew it, her existence, which seemed so inconsequential but was precious nonetheless, had been cut off. And somehow, some way, they were all going to die, because there was nothing left. There was nothing left at all.

Sarah glanced down at her children and noticed how still they were, sitting cuddled against her lap. Despite her exhaustion, maternal concern took over and she carefully held her hands over their sleeping bodies, rejoicing each time they breathed, each time their little lungs filled with air and they lived, they _lived_.

But Alex looked pale and Ashley had already lost some of her chubby baby fat. Sarah wanted to cry. Her own hunger was insignificant compared to the pain she felt when she saw them, when she watched them sleeping and knew that she had failed.

Her children were going to die. They were going to die right before her. And there was absolutely nothing she could do.

A few weak tears dripped down her cheeks. She didn't bother to brush them away, but let her head drop, her hair falling in dirty strands over her stained sweatshirt.

_Joe_, she thought and wondered when she was going to see him again. On the other side, maybe. In Heaven. And he'd be waiting for her. He'd be waiting for them all.

And maybe it wouldn't be so bad…

"Sarah? Can I talk to you for a sec?"

The sound of the warm, masculine voice jerked her out of her morbid musings. Sarah raised her head and because her sense of social instinct was still intact, she quickly dried her eyes, embarrassed to be found crying.

Bernard was standing over her, his expression faintly sympathetic, a small frown curving his lips which were almost hidden beneath an untrimmed, sandy-haired moustache. He fiddled with his glasses nervously while she stood, gentle slipping both Ashley and Alex off her lap. Alex stirred once, but fell back into a fitful doze when Sarah covered him with his jacket. Ashley slept on, undisturbed.

"Yeah, sure," Sarah said. She rubbed her sticky, sweaty hands on her pajama pants, trying to ignore the dizzy sensation she felt every time she got to her feet.

Bernard tugged at his glasses and gestured off to the back of the gym where they had pushed the basketball hoops to make room for more blankets and sleeping bags.

Sarah followed him off to the sidelines, weaving her way past a few of the other families, most of whom were sleeping even though it was one o'clock in the afternoon according to Bernard's wristwatch.

He had a rather fancy timepiece, she'd noticed. Not a Rolex, but something nice, with a gold band and a heavy clasp that probably wouldn't break if someone pulled on it. The watch, however, was about the only nice thing about Bernard now. Unlike most of the refugees who were wearing sleeping clothes or t-shirts and jeans, he had on an expensive grey suit and neck-tie. But the jacket was all wrinkled and his white shirt yellowed at the collar and his tie had gotten ripped at some point.

He must've had a good life, though, Sarah imagined. From what she had gleaned, he was a tenured history professor at some private college and he'd been at the faculty Christmas party when all the trouble had started. His wife, who hadn't been feeling up to the annual gathering due to a nasty head cold, was home in bed. Bernard had told Sarah that he'd tried his best to reach her and had actually gotten as far as his own front lawn when she'd attacked him.

Sarah wasn't real clear about what had happened after that and Bernard usually skimmed past the details, but like the rest of them, he had made his way to St. Mary's because they had a fall-out shelter. And over the past week or so, the tenured history professor had become something of their de facto leader. His intelligence had little to do with why he had been put in charge, but rather, it was his clear-headedness, his calm, soothing authority that made people generally gravitate towards him. To his credit, Sarah thought Bernard had really done his best, had kept them alive for as long as he could in the damp old gym with limited supplies and almost no contact with the outside world. But when it came down to it, even he couldn't work miracles, although Sarah was sure he had tried.

Bernard stopped by the edge of the gym, his back facing the wide, double doors that led out into the stairwell beyond. With a flick of his hand, he plucked his glasses from his face and wiped them on the hem of his suit jacket.

Sarah thought he looked a little paler than usual. The lack of food was starting to take its toll.

"How are your kids?" Bernard asked, his question dangerously close to small talk.

Sarah ran her fingers through her messy ponytail, pulling at the knots. "They're all right," she lied, because she didn't know what else to say. Bernard was a smart guy. He knew what was going on…probably more than anyone else did.

He sighed when she finished speaking, a certain air of resignation lessening his quiet dignity.

"Sarah, I have to tell you something," he said slowly. "I don't want to start a panic. Please God, I don't want to start a panic, but people need to know."

"We're out of food?" she supplied, hoping to do the dirty work for him. Even amidst her own despair and agony, she felt awfully sorry for Bernard. He was, in a word, valiant, a real hero, and she didn't want him to feel bad about failing them. He hadn't really, after all, because there was only so much one human being could do.

"We have next to nothing left," Bernard admitted, "but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Oh." Sarah let go of her ponytail, her hand slapping against her thigh. What else, she thought, could possibly be worse? Her empty stomach worked itself into a knot and without thinking, she looked over her shoulder back across the gym. Ashley and Alex were still dozing. She could see them both stretched out on the sleeping bag.

_God_, she thought. _What next? _

"You know I sent a few people out a couple of days ago, when we first started running low on food," Bernard explained. "I wanted to see if there was any news, if the National Guard was called out, if there was…if there was anything left."

_Nothing_, Sarah's mind added. She shifted her weight anxiously. "Yeah," she said. "I know."

She was suddenly uncomfortable, thinking of the world outside their small haven. Since coming to St. Mary's two weeks ago, Sarah herself had not set foot beyond the confines of the gym. Part of her reluctance was, of course, founded on practicality. Ashley and Alex needed to be looked after and Sarah wasn't willing to leave them behind for a second. But even she had to admit that some of her hesitation was founded on absolute terror. No one quite knew for sure what had happened, why the world had suddenly devolved into a state of animalistic chaos, driving human beings, people like Bernard's wife and some of her neighbors and so many others, to kill each other. Civilization, which had seemed so fixed, so permanent, had collapsed in on itself.

Sure, there was the usual talk of dirty bombs or rogue viruses, scenarios that seemed straight out of science fiction to Sarah. But there was also talk about other things, ideas that echoed with a sort of ageless resonance that even she couldn't ignore. Some of the refugees living in the gym had told stories. They told stories about the things they saw, possessed people and angels. They all seemed to talk about angels…

Either way, Sarah was downright terrified to set one toe outside the shelter and she was surprised when a few of the bolder refugees had volunteered to go scavenging for food and that ever elusive treasure, news.

And to be honest, she wasn't exactly curious to hear what they had found out. Her sanity, she felt, was hanging by a precious thread, and anything might finally unseat it. She didn't want to know what horrors the scavenging party had come across. She didn't want to know what they had found out, because then she'd have a new nightmare to deal with.

Her husband Joe was still out there and she couldn't bear to think of what might be happening to him.

Bernard seemed to realize this and he was gentle with her. He put his glasses back on and cleared his throat as if he were about to start a lecture.

Sarah looked up at him cautiously, the palm of her hand pressed to her neck. "What is it?" she asked, summoning the last of her courage if only because Ashley and Alex needed her to be strong.

"I'll be honest with you, Sarah," Bernard said, his voice a measured whisper. "It's not about what the scavenging party found-they found very little, actually-it's about what found them."

She dropped her hand from her neck, images of deformed mutants and zombies and all sorts of childhood terrors racing through her mind. "What do you mean?" she asked.

Bernard glanced over his shoulder at the gym doors. The darkened stairwell lay beyond, the corridor giving off an air that was sinister. Sarah couldn't help it. She shivered.

"There are other people out there," Bernard said at length. "Survivors…just like us."

"But isn't that good news?" she questioned.

Bernard's expression soured. "You don't understand," he said grimly. "They're like _us_, Sarah. They have no food left. They're in dire straits. They're _desperate_."

A cold weight settled in her chest when she noticed the emphasis he placed on the last word. She tried to inhale, tried to clear her body of the clutter of senseless fear, but she couldn't. "We're in trouble, aren't we?"

"Yes," Bernard lisped. He looked at the gym doors again. "Will you come upstairs with me for just a minute? I want to show you what's been going on."

"Sure," Sarah said, although she was nearly paralyzed with fear. She glanced back at her children and was only slightly satisfied when she saw them still sleeping peacefully.

"Don't worry, they'll be safe here," Bernard assured her as they passed through the heavy doors.

Sarah said nothing, but followed him up the wide staircase to the first floor of the school. The electricity was out and all their battery operated lanterns and flashlights and candles had been used to keep the cavernous gym as well-lit as possible. Sarah had to feel her way along, her hand skimming over the cold banister. Bernard helped her as best he could, but they were both stumbling through the dark, constantly slamming their shins into the high, concrete steps.

It got a bit lighter near the top of the stairwell. Another set of double doors led out to the first floor hallway by the principle's office. Sarah stepped into the long, locker-lined corridor and had to shield her eyes. Warm sunlight was coming through the large front doors at the very end of the hall. She saw a few of the men from the shelter standing there, arranging old chairs and desks into an unsteady barricade.

The cold weight in her chest hardened, sending a vicious tremor throughout her weak body. She saw that some of the men had armed themselves with baseball bats from the gym's equipment room.

_Desperation_, she thought and the word reverberated through her mind, a terrifying herald of what she knew was to come.

Bernard led her up to the barricade and they were able to peek out between the maze of chair and desk legs through the large glass panes of the doors. Sarah could see a sliver of the school's front courtyard, the circular patch of grass still decked with its holiday nativity scene. One of the shepherds had been knocked over, along with the angel.

"It's difficult to see them," Bernard told her. He pointed out a row of parked cars that sat beyond the school fence. Sarah squinted, a sudden flutter of movement betraying the intruder's location. There was a man standing in the space between two cars. He had on a light t-shirt and a wool cap and his jeans were dirty. There was a cigarette dangling from his mouth…and a gun in his right hand.

Sarah jolted away from the barricade quickly, as if it had been electrified. She drew back against the row of lockers, hearing the metal clank as her shoulder blades hit the doors.

"He doesn't look too dangerous," one of the men at the barricade said, gesturing at their unwelcome visitor loitering outside, "but believe me, he's got himself a couple of nasty friends."

"What do you mean?" Sarah demanded, although she thought she already knew.

Bernard folded his arms over his chest, his fancy watch glinting in the sunlight. "There are armed men," he said, "stationed at the other exits. This is systematic, Sarah. They want to make sure we can't escape."

_Escape_. The word was a cold death knell, an unfulfilled promise. Slowly, Sarah pushed herself off the lockers. "I see," she said.

Bernard looked at her sadly. "They must have followed our scavenging party back here," he said. "They must think we have food."

"And they're desperate," Sarah replied. The words were vile in her mouth, coating her tongue with the bitter taste of fear.

"We think they're going to try to break in here tonight," Bernard said. He put his hands on his hips, his posture sagging. Standing there in his wrinkled grey suit with his fancy watch, he looked strangely like a war-worn general, a commander resigned to the inevitable, the final defeat.

But Sarah couldn't think of defeat just yet. Instead, she thought of Ashley and Alex still sleeping downstairs. She thought of her two beautiful babies, who were either going to starve to death or be killed.

And God, Sarah realized, she was sure now. She was sure that they were all going to be killed.

* * *

"Mommy?"

Sarah lifted her head up from where it had been resting on her coat, trying her best to ignore the rapid pitter-patter of her frightened little heart. "Yes, honey?"

Alex was sitting cross-legged on the edge of their sleeping bag, a few ugly dark streaks underneath his bright blue eyes.

_Joe's eyes_, Sarah thought vaguely. She curled her arm tighter around Ashley, who was dozing quietly besides her.

Alex leaned against her outstretched leg. His tiny hands were wrapped around the toes of his sneakers and the cuffs of his pajama pants were smudged with grit. He looked so small and fragile, she realized, hating how white his skin was, how his face seemed swallowed up by his wide, wide eyes.

_Joe's eyes. They're Joe's eyes._

Alex tugged at one of his ratty shoelaces. "Mommy, when are we going back home?"

Sarah swallowed. She was aware of the strain in her neck muscles, an ache that trailed all the way down her back, making her legs stiff and tired. But she managed to smile for Alex. Somehow, she managed to smile for her son. "Soon, baby," she told him and prayed that she was right.

_Soon, soon. God, please let it be soon._

It was nighttime, or so Sarah guessed. The walls of the gym were the same grey color they always were, the scattered lanterns and flashlights and candles providing enough light to deceive the mind into thinking it could be daytime. Sarah glanced around her and saw the other families huddled together on their blankets and sleeping bags. It was just the women and children now, the men had all gone upstairs, armed with baseball bats and even a few lacrosse sticks. They were husbands and brothers. Grandfathers and uncles. Regular men transformed into soldiers through necessity.

Sarah felt sorry for them, because she had witnessed a glimmer of their fear. Their terror, she decided, was much more powerful than her own, which was tempered by acceptance. And although Sarah hated to admit it, she was prepared for what was about to happen. Her only hope, if she could be granted one, was that it would be quick. She hoped that they would die quickly.

Glancing around at the other mothers and their children, she wondered if they felt the same way as her or was she alone in her grim resignation. There was a woman sitting a few feet away from her on a dirty green blanket with her teenaged daughter. Sarah's gaze met the mother's eyes, which were a faded grey and she saw that there was very little humanity left in any of them.

They were all dying animals. Hunted down. Cornered. Sarah could almost feel the cold barrel of a gun pressed against her head and she hugged Ashley closer.

If only there was somewhere they could run. If only, if only…

If only they could have a miracle.

_Unlikely_, the very last of her sanity told her. _You're dead, girl. You're dead._

Sarah buried her face in Ashley's light blond hair. Joe's hair. She waited.

It didn't really take long for things to start. A couple of minutes later she heard the first of the shots ring out from somewhere above her head.

The woman sitting next her closed her eyes and put her fingers over her ears. Her teenaged daughter started to cry.

"Mommy!" Alex scampered closer to her and she opened her arms to him.

"It's all right, baby," she soothed, scooping him up onto her lap along with Ashley.

"Is that the police?" Alex asked, his voice a soft tremor beneath the constant pop, pop, pop of a few firearms.

Sarah didn't know what to say. She was straining her ears, listening to the harsh sound of grating metal, of the chairs and desks being knocked down from the flimsy barricade. A man screamed.

"What do we do?" the woman sitting next to her asked wildly. "What do you we do if they break in?"

"There's nowhere to go," her daughter said, hysteria rising into her pretty face, giving her the look of a corpse.

"Just…just stay calm," Sarah said. Alex was gripping tight to her arm now, his short nails digging into her wrist. Ashley was awake and wailing.

And oh, Sarah thought, how horrible it was to hear that broken child's cry amidst the sounds of violence, amidst the sporadic bursts of gunfire and the battering of doors and the screams. They were in the middle of a war, fighting against some faceless strangers who probably had starving families of their own…

How awful, Sarah thought, that it should come to this. Human beings scrounging around like dogs. Neighbors killing neighbors. What had happened. God, oh God, what had happened?

The gunfire suddenly stopped and the quiet that followed was strained, a thin little veneer of peace that settled over the gym and stole the breath from her aching lungs. It was Alex who broke the silence, little Alex who was only nine years old and missed his daddy. Little Alex, her firstborn, her child, her baby, who was going to die.

"Mommy," he whispered, his lips right next to her ear. Sarah could hear that he was scared.

And she didn't know how, but she decided then that her children weren't going to die. She wouldn't let it happen. She just wouldn't. Not if she had to throw herself on top of them and beg for mercy when the raiders broke in. Not if she had to kill a man.

Sarah decided. She decided.

Getting shakily to her feet, both Ashley and Alex still clinging to her arms, she handed her children over to the woman with the faded grey eyes.

"What are you-" the woman began.

"Watch them for me," Sarah told her, gently pulling Ashley's small hand away from her tangled hair.

"I can't," the woman growled.

"You can," Sarah replied and she took off across the gym, trotting past the blankets and sleeping bags and the families huddled together in tight clusters. She found one of the extra bats the men had left behind leaning against the gym door and she stood there with it, her back pressed against the wall.

Strangely, Sarah had never felt more like a parent than she did standing there, ready to kill for her children. And motherhood, she knew, was just as much about sacrifice as it was about sleepless nights and packing school lunches and letting Ashley play dress-up with her old prom gown. It all came down to this, really, and Sarah realized nothing else in her life was significant. Only this instant. Only this brief space of time. She had been put there on earth for one reason and one reason only. To be a true mother to her kids, to be the parent they deserved…even in death.

It was easy to hear the raiders now. They were on the stairs already. Footsteps pounded on the concrete and someone hollered and Sarah gripped the bat until she was certain her knuckles would crack. Time slowed, the moments dragging by until reality seemed like a vague dream, a nightmare, and Sarah wasn't sure if she was alive or already dead.

Vaguely, she wondered if this was how Joe felt when he was out on patrol, if he experienced the same deep loneliness that came from knowing the world was a hostile place and he was standing on the front lines, waiting, just waiting. And inexplicably, Sarah realized that she was close to her husband then, perhaps closer than they ever had been before. He was with her, not in body, maybe, but in soul and she found strength in his spirit.

Joe would want her to go down fighting, she knew. He would want her to fight…

Sarah's hands crept up the base of the bat.

She wasn't sure how many she would be able to knock-out. She wasn't sure if she'd be able to do anything at all. But she had to try. Joe would have wanted her to try.

"Watch the stairs, guys. Don't let anyone else come down," a reedy voice said. The speaker was just on the other side of the door.

"Please." That was Bernard, his tone muted, as if he were speaking through a mouth of broken teeth.

Sarah waited. She waited.

The gym doors sprung open and a body spilled onto the floor. Bernard had blood on his face, coming from his nose and it dripped down onto his nice grey suit, dirtying his already yellowed shirt collar.

He looked up and saw her standing there, his eyes widening. "Sarah, no!"

But it was too late. Sarah swung the bat blindly and felt it connect with something hard. The wooden tip of it hit the door. She shattered the glass pane.

"Fuck!" the reedy voice screamed. He was still out in the stairwell.

With a sinking feeling, Sarah realized that she had missed him entirely.

"Come here!" Someone was moving through the door and a large hand snatched at her wrist although she tried to pull away.

"No!" she cried out as thick arms snaked around her waist. The bat was wrenched from her grip. "No! No!"

She was pummeling the man, scratching and kicking him, but he was stronger. Squeezing his arms around her, he dragged Sarah to the ground. She could feel his hot hands pressed up against her chest and then her head snapped to the side. Someone had slapped her. Gasping, her chin smacked into the floor and she shut her eyes against the pain, against her failure.

"Damn bitch," the man growled. He dragged her to her feet and Sarah yelped.

It wouldn't be quick, she realized. It wasn't going to be quick.

"Hold her," her attacker ordered. His face was inches from hers and she could see that he was same man she had seen standing out in front of the school, only his wool cap was off and she had ripped the sleeve of his t-shirt.

Two other men came in through the gym doors, their shoes crunching over the broken glass. One stepped forward and put his arm around Sarah's chest, his gun hanging over her shoulder like a casual threat. The other stood guard by the doors. He had a flashlight in his hand and he kept shining the beam up into the black stairwell.

"We got the stairs completely blocked," he told their leader. "No one is getting in and out, least not until we're done here."

"Keep it that way," the leader responded. He was standing over poor Bernard, wiping his face with a large, paw of a hand. "Looks like we only got women and children in here. They aren't even armed."

Sarah tried to twist her head to the side to get a glimpse of her kids, but the man holding her pressed his gun against her cheek. She could feel the barrel at the edge of her mouth.

So this was how it was going to end…

"Please," Bernard mumbled. He was trying to get to his knees, but one of the men kicked him back down, thrusting the heel of his dirty sneaker square into the professor's shoulder. "There are families here," Bernard said, a note of begging in his voice. "Just families."

And it was really awful, Sarah realized, to see such a strong man beg. Not for the first time, she wondered what kind of person Bernard had been before. She was certain that he had been respected. She was certain that he had a nice life and a loving family. She was certain that he had been happy.

But now, yes now, he had been reduced to this, reduced to crawling on his knees, pleading for the lives of children who weren't even his own.

_Martyr_, Sarah thought. _He's a martyr. _

Bernard had his hands raised, his eyes heavenward and he looked, for all the world, like St. Sebastian awaiting the firing squad. "Please," he echoed. "There are only families here."

"Yeah, a lot of families to feed," the leader said, his expression pitiless. "Tell us where the food is so we don't have to kill anyone else."

"There is no food!" Bernard insisted. "We're starving too."

"One last time," the man said. His right arm twitched slightly, lifting his gun. "You got one last chance."

"We have nothing!" Bernard cried and Sarah saw that he did have tears on his face, because he knew he had failed them.

The man raised his gun and blew his brains out. There were screams throughout the gym. Somewhere in the distance, she thought she heard Ashley sobbing again.

Sarah shut her eyes, thinking of Bernard lying face down, his fancy watch still ticking on his wrist. What a horrible way to die. What a horrible way to die…

…and she was next.

"Come 'ere," the leader reached forward and fisted his hand in her hair, pulling her to him. Up close, Sarah saw that he was just about as scared as she was. He chewed convulsively on his lower lip, his teeth dragging over the flesh until it was red and almost bloodied.

But when Sarah looked him in the eyes, she knew it didn't matter that he was scared, only that he was desperate. So terribly desperate. She felt sorry for him then, because there was no way in hell he would ever forget this moment and what he was about to do to her.

"You see what just happened?" he asked, his gun pointing at Bernard's body.

Sarah nodded numbly. The gym was quiet, but she could still hear a few men moving about in the hallway overhead. Someone was shifting the barricade, throwing the heavy desks around.

"Hey, boss," the man by the door said. He was shining his flashlight through the broken glass pane.

"Shut up," the leader threw the words at him, his hand shaking a little as his fingers tangled in her hair. "All right now, lady. You know we're not playing games here. Tell us where you're keeping your supplies."

"I can't," Sarah replied, the nervous words throbbing in her throat. Hearing the quiet around her, she knew then that no one was coming to help her. She was the solitary soldier in this battle, this war and she was going to die alone. Alone like Bernard. Completely alone…

_Joe_, she thought, remembering her husband one last time, her brave, brave husband who hadn't been scared to be alone, who hadn't been scared to die. _Joe, be with me. _

Sarah waited.

There was a noise on the top of the stairwell, a shouted curse. But the man only pushed her down to the floor until she was kneeling next to Bernard's still bleeding body.

"You know what's going to happen," he said. "So just tell me where you're keeping your stuff. This is the last time I'm gonna-"

"Hey!" the man by the door suddenly screamed. "Hey! Hey boss!" His voice broke off into a high, pained wail, but the sound was drowned out by a sudden rush of air.

Something big, something tremendously big, was moving about in the stairwell and the guns started pop, pop, popping again. Metal collided with concrete and the echo of it was so loud that Sarah thought a truck was going to come driving through the wall.

The doors did lurch forward, a flash of deadly steel smashing the already shattered panes. Little bits of crushed glass sprayed into the air like glitter in a snow globe and Sarah saw the man by the door fall back, his face half ripped off by some weapon that was huge and heavy and spiked.

The second man inside the gym rushed forward heedlessly, scrambling over to his fallen comrade's side. But the great shadow loomed over him and he was lifted right off his feet. A grotesque snap followed and his head hung limply on his neck.

And Sarah couldn't help it, she screamed.

"Oh God!" the man still holding her yelled. He jumped backwards, pulling her with him. "Oh God!"

In his haste to escape, he kicked over the lantern by the door and sent it skittering across the gym floor. The light went out and the dark bled into the gym and Sarah could barely even make out the shadow that still lurked by the door. Light footsteps raced towards them and a figure was suddenly silhouetted against the fallen lantern.

"L.A.P.D.! Drop the gun! Drop it now!"

"L.A.P.D.?" the man spat. "You've gotta be fucking kidding-"

A single shot rang out, the man's hold on her going slack. He fell to the floor with a quiet groan. Immediately, Sarah put her hands to her chest, feeling, probing, searching for a wound of her own. Had she been shot too? Had she been shot?

Her fingers patted her sweatshirt, her terrible fear only subsiding when she realized that the fabric was dry. There was no bleeding hole in her flesh. No bullet wound. She was standing tall. She was…alive.

Sarah's breathing was ragged, but she glanced up, looking for the figure in the shadows. "Joe?" she asked hopefully, unable to connect the L.A.P.D. with anyone besides him. "Joe? Joe?"

But it wasn't him. It wasn't her beautiful husband with his country-boy smile and blue eyes and welcoming arms who stepped fully into the light. It wasn't him…only his partner, Max.

"Sarah!" Max launched herself forward, her thin face alive with shining hope and resilience and pure, utter joy. "Sarah, Sarah, I can't believe I found you! Thank God, oh thank you God!"

But Sarah wasn't looking at the woman anymore. She was staring over shoulder, where the big, dark shadow moved, where the hulking, undefined mass stood. The lantern threw the figure into a silhouette and Sarah saw everything, his face, his eyes, his towering, muscled body. And his wings, God his wings.

"Max," she said, even as the woman threw her arms around her neck. "Max, you've brought an angel with you."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Ah, only two chapters left! I'm truly going to miss this story.

In chapter twenty-five, Max reunites with Sarah and her children. Gabriel witnesses a change in the woman he loves. The next installment is in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Thanks so very much for reading!


	25. Chapter TwentyFive Miracle at St Mary's

**Author's Note: **Here we go, another super-long chapter. Honestly, I kept fussing over this installment, changing this and that, adding scenes, etc. Perhaps my neurotic revising is my way of holding onto this story just a little longer. I really feel like the mother bird who doesn't want to push her chick out of the nest, hehe.

As always, I have to thank all my amazing readers and reviewers, **Farren Ouro, HowlynMad, saichick, ScrimjaNinja, DemonicSymphony, Fyrefly **and **franky**. Also, I would like to thank all the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. You guys are awesome. I love you all! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-Five Miracle at St. Mary's **

Gabriel stood in the long, main hallway of St. Mary's, his reflection showing in the polished tile floor. The blue light of early dawn was drifting in through the windows and he could see now, in the soft glow, the puddles of blood that still marked the corridor. The weak barricade, the chairs and the desks, had been dismantled. A few of the lockers had bullet holes in them. The door to the principal's office was hanging precariously off a single brass hinge.

Gabriel paced the length of the hall, enjoying the calm of the morning even though it was wretchedly deceptive. He was alone now, quite alone, and the world breathed around him, stirring and settling into a new day that was beautiful only for its sacred promise of hope.

It was strange, he thought, to embrace something as gentle and as blessed as hope while standing on ground that had, only a few hours before, been the site of a veritable battle. The war had not been his, of course, nor had it belonged to Max, although she had somehow made it her own. She had somehow taken it upon herself to fight.

And Gabriel could love her for that alone. He could love her for ages and ages to come.

Halting before the water fountain, he rested the handle of his mace against the wall and shook his arm vigorously. The muscles in his hands, all the thick veins and lean bones, had begun to ache with the memory of combat. There had been at least a dozen men attacking the school the night before and Gabriel had killed most of them. A few, however, had been left to Max.

Although a hardened warrior, the angel was slightly uncomfortable with the recent violence. It disturbed him in a way it never had before, washing over his thoughts in a crimson tide of chaos. Gabriel found that he was vaguely sickened, nauseated by the spots of blood that so casually desecrated the school's hallways. The evidence of death was everywhere, not just in St. Mary's, but in the streets, in homes across the city, in a tiny grave back in the Mojave marked with a crude wooden cross.

_Thou shalt not kill…_

It was hard, Gabriel realized, to equate violence, to equate underserved death with anyone other than Jack. The notion had latched onto his mind, becoming a part of him before he could even think it shake it free. And Max, he felt, must certainly feel the same way.

Why else would she have rushed into a war that was not hers? Why else would she fight to save children who were not her own, people who weren't even her family? And why had he, the thoughtless outsider, the relative stranger, dared to join her?

The answer, Gabriel knew, was simple.

Because of Jack. It was all because of Jack.

Grimacing faintly, he squatted by the wall, adopting the crouching position that was most comfortable for his massive, winged body. It was uncanny how the wheels of fate had been set in motion. After all these years, after the decades and the centuries and the millennia he had spent observing the machinations of humans, he was still surprised to see how life had unfolded. Everything, it seemed, had fallen into place.

Gabriel cracked his sore knuckles, remembering the previous afternoon when he and Max had searched desperately for Sarah and her young family. Their first stop had been at the Barlow's house, a pleasant little white-sided building that had a square front lawn and a high-fenced backyard with an empty kennel. Together, they had strolled up the concrete path to the front door, two uncommon pilgrims in a lost paradise, two lovers in a world that was no longer beloved. It was the beginning, Gabriel felt, of what would be a long journey for them both and it started with a few tentative steps, with Max striding besides him in her soiled uniform and him in his armor. Human cop and heavenly one.*

The door of the Barlow's home, Max had noted immediately, was unlocked and they both slipped inside the house, frightened, perhaps of what they might find. Or what they wouldn't.

The air inside the foyer was dry and hot, tinged with the lingering smell of smoke that cam from the streets outside. They had stood by the door for a long minute, breathing the foul air into their lungs and after a long minute, Gabriel felt Max's hand slide against his own.

"Sometimes I feel like the last woman on earth," she said, her voice slick with tears. "It makes me sick."

Gabriel let his fingers brush against hers, enjoying the simple touch. "You are not alone," he replied. "I promise you that."

She didn't say anything, but moved inside the house, her steps slow and ponderous, the gait of a mourner at a funeral.

Max had been bitterly disappointed when she realized that the home was abandoned. Gabriel recalled the expression on her thin face as she stood in the living room, studying the broken sliding glass door and the blood on the floor.

"This isn't good," she had said lowly. "This is _not _good."

And Gabriel didn't have to ask, for he already knew what she meant. The Barlow's neighborhood had been decimated by the possessed. Burnt-out cars littered the streets, some still having charred bodies locked inside. Almost all the houses had been broken into, including the Barlow's and the spattering of blood by the smashed door gave Gabriel a sinister, sick feeling deep in his gut.

There had been children in this home, he knew. Young, innocent children.

Like Jack.

The discovery of the note in one of the bedrooms had elated them both. Max wasn't certain where St. Mary's was, though and the fact that the GPS system in her squad car wasn't working didn't exactly help matters.

"I have a horrible sense of direction," she told him as she climbed back into the driver's seat, the note still clutched in her hands.

Gabriel stood back as she slammed the car door, her frustration venting itself in a little burst of physical force.

And yet, he managed to find a smile for her.

"Let me help you," he said and before Max could respond, he launched himself upward, the full sweep of his wings carrying him over the neighborhood into the smoky sky. Below, he saw Max stick her head out the open window of her car. She put her vehicle in drive and began to follow him.

Finding St. Mary's, the proverbial needle in the haystack, had been no easy task. Gabriel himself had no idea what the building might look like, so he searched for large structures, for broad, flat rooftops. His first few tries were unsuccessful and he brought Max to a mall, a parking garage and a hotel. After dark began to fall, Gabriel sensed that she was, in fact, beginning to grow impatient, although she never complained openly to him. Her trust, he knew, was hard won and a sort of panic rose up within him when he thought of losing it. Of losing her…

His diligence, however, was finally rewarded when he noticed the football field. The rectangular patch of green, with its slender goalposts, sat adjacent to a low, long building. And even from on high, flying in tight circles near the reaches of the clouds, Gabriel heard the raucous shriek of bullets pierce the night in the area around the school. He saw the fitful flashes of gunfire.

Swooping low to the ground, his hands grazing over the lights fixed to the top of Max's squad car, he motioned for her to stop. She parked her vehicle about a block away from the school and together, they approached the building on foot, using the towering trees that lined the streets as cover. They were just outside the high, wrought-iron fence when the first of the armed men broke in through the front doors.

Max stiffened when a volley of shots sounded. Peering cautiously through the thin bars of the fence, she offered him a tight smile. "I don't know about you," she said, her hand slipping casually towards her gun belt, "but that doesn't look right."

"You could walk away from this," Gabriel told her, although he knew she wouldn't.

Max sighed and clicked the safety off her gun. "Yeah well, what kind of cop would I be then?"

And oh, he thought, it was a wonderful moment, despite the gunfire and the promise of more death and the threat of the darkening night that loomed around them. Gabriel thought about kissing her then, as she had so brazenly done back at the apartment, but he satisfied his yearning with the memory alone.

"Max," he whispered as they both crept up the circular drive, stopping only to duck behind the nativity scene. "I am proud of you."

She flashed him a flippant grin over her should. "Whatever."

And the simple gentleness of their life, of their love, was soon lost in yet another battle, in blood and broken bones and more bodies lying at their feet. It had been, Gabriel realized, a night of vengeance, a reckoning for them both who had lost so much and Jack. God, God, they had lost Jack.

Crouching by the water fountain now, the angel looked up the deserted hallway and allowed himself to feel at peace. There was a grimness to this reality, but he accepted it for what it was, for the brutality of violence that was only softened by the knowledge that they had saved lives, precious, innocent lives.

Sarah Barlow not least among them.

Gabriel couldn't help it. He smiled when he thought of Max and her wild happiness when she rushed to the woman, throwing her arms around her in a clinging embrace. It was a reward for an unfortunate trial and Gabriel savored the memory, letting it play over and over again in his mind until he thought he felt a shadow of Max's joy.

As it was, he hadn't been able to witness much of their reunion. His arrival at the gym had, unfortunately, caused something of a panic amongst the survivors who saw him. It was a wretched sight to behold, even for Gabriel, who had been only mildly tolerant of humans in the past. Standing in the doorway, his boots dusted with the ash of shattered glass, he had caught a glimpse of true suffering. Women and children, hiding in the dark. Dirty faces. Sunken cheeks. Long, wailing screams and fear, fear so thick the air was coated with the vile odor of it.

The scene was a portrait of innocence destroyed, some horrible pantomime of tragedy, of children with deadness in their eyes.

And seeing them, the crying younglings and the terrified mothers and the whole sorrowful, pitiful state they had been found living in, Gabriel at last understood why his brother cherished humans so, why he had gone so far as to debase his body and sacrifice his own life for that of a single child.

He understood. He finally understood.

His renewed compassion, however, was not welcome amongst the survivors. They cowered before him. The women wept, the children cried. They pointed at his wings and screamed in pure, unrelenting hysteria.

Wisely, he had slipped away and let Max handle the situation with her usual quiet authority. When he had left, she had been doing everything in her power to restore some tentative sense of calm, helping the survivors to move the bodies and put what remained of their little haven to rights. Gabriel was impressed by her industriousness, although he had never doubted her resilience. There was a part of him, of course, that wanted to be with her, to see the small wonders she was already unknowingly working. But Gabriel knew that she needed to be alone. It was his place, after all, only to guide her. Max herself would have to do the rest.

And she would. He knew she would.

Gabriel tilted his head back, working out all the uncomfortable knots in his neck and shoulder. Glancing upward, he was more than a little surprised when he came face to face with the benign visage of a plaster statue tucked into the alcove above the fountain. The figure surveyed him with silent approval, the peach skin of the cheeks brushed over with a faint blush, the chin dimpled and firm, the features slightly effeminate.

Intrigued, Gabriel turned and glanced over the curve his right wing at the statue. His heart did jolt a little when he recognized the figure, Michael clad in gold armor, a plumed helmet slipping over his youthful brow, his sword raised and pointed directly at Lucifer's head.

It was irony at its best. It was a sign and it warmed Gabriel inside, made him feel complete and whole. Made him feel worthy and oh, he had not felt worthy in a long time.

"Do I have your blessing at last?" Gabriel asked the statue and the answer came to him not in words, but in a soft understanding that filled his heart, that brought his mind to a place that was secure and certain and happy. Yes, he could be happy. He could be very happy.

"See me now, brother," Gabriel said, a prayer of thanksgiving weaving through his thoughts. "See what you have done."

A sudden noise down the hall disrupted the sanctity of the moment. Gabriel shot to his feet, his wings pinging off the metal basin of the water fountain. A door swung open and closed. He saw Max emerge from the stairwell halfway down the corridor. She had Sarah with her.

Gabriel couldn't disguise his eagerness. He started towards Max, his pace quick and deliberate. But a muffled scream from Sarah, the pressing of her clenched hands to her trembling lips, stopped him in his tracks.

The woman was terrified. She was utterly terrified of him.

Gabriel thought of the diner then, the girl Audrey crying out in fear. There had been a time, he knew, when humans hadn't been afraid of him. There had been a time.

Max looked between them both, her mouth bunched up at the corner as she realized what Gabriel already knew.

"Hey, hey," she said, turning to frightened woman. "He's not gonna hurt you, all right? I promise, he's not going to do anything." And in speaking, she shot Gabriel a warning glance

_Stay away_, it said.

He shifted his weight uselessly, hating his helplessness. He did not want to stay away.

Max raised her shoulder in a half-shrug, softening her rejection. Her expression was wry, conveying that she in fact felt the same way as him. But there were more important things now, necessities that superseded their petty comfort.

Reluctantly, but respectfully, Gabriel stayed where he was, allowing Max to usher Sarah into one of the empty classrooms.

"What is it?" he heard the woman bleat.

Max only laughed.

Their voices became muffled then, lost behind thick walls. Even the relative quiet wouldn't carry their words to Gabriel's ears and for a moment, he fought his own curiosity, which was becoming increasingly demanding.

In the end, Gabriel broke his covenant of restraint and slipped soundlessly down the hall. He had to satisfy himself with only a limited view of the classroom. Max had left the door slightly ajar and from his position a few feet away, he could just make out her profile. She was leaning against the desk, arms crossed, looking tired and worn, but beautiful.

In her own way, she was so beautiful to him.

"It's okay, you know," Max said, nodding slightly as she spoke, encouraging her frightened friend to relax. "Everything is going to be okay."

Sarah stepped forward and Gabriel caught sight of her right shoulder, the fringe of her brown ponytail falling across her neck. "I just want to know what it is," she said, her voice breathy and weak and heavy with withheld tears. "I just want to know what it-"

"Him," Max corrected lightly. "He's an angel, Sarah."

"What?" Sarah's shoulder jerked, her stance immediately becoming protective.

"You said so yourself, back in the gym, remember? Max replied. She was staring at her feet. "His name is Gabriel."

"Oh my God." Sarah put her fingers over her mouth.

The classroom was silent. Max uncrossed her arms and braced them on the lip of the dull, grey metal desk behind her. Sunlight leaked in underneath the window shades, a line of promising yellow cutting across the white-tiled floor.

Gabriel stood patiently in the hall, absorbing the moment. Sarah's nervous energy clashed with Max's calm and the tender peace of the young morning was threatened. Suddenly exhausted, he leaned his head against one of the lockers.

Nothing would ever be easy for Max, he knew. But he loved her enough to be proud of her trial, her individual struggle which had been set aside for her. Because she was unique. Because she was blessed.

Because she was so very worthy.

Silently, Gabriel encouraged her, hoping that she could feel his presence just as readily as he felt hers.

Max turned, fussing with the now dirty gauze bandage wrapped around her wounded wrist. She saw him standing outside the door and their eyes met and he willed her to be strong. He willed her to be determined and resilient and brave and all the things he knew she already was.

Max raised her eyebrows in acknowledgment, but Gabriel wasn't sure she had understood him. Casually, she looked back at Sarah, the hard line of the gash on her forehead giving her the appearance of the resigned warrior, the tired, yet tireless soldier who battles on and on and on.

"You all right?" she asked.

Sarah sighed, the sound choked with a sob. "His name is Gabriel," she repeated.

"Gabriel." And in speaking, Max smiled tightly. "I know, he's a bit intimidating to look at, a bit scary, but you get used to it…after a while."

Sarah suppressed sobs turned into a weak laugh. Gabriel saw her collapse against a spindly-legged chair near the front of the classroom, her thigh pressed against the plastic seat. "People were talking about angels," she said, "they were talking, but I didn't believe them. How could I?"

"Hmm, you and me both," Max said. "Sometimes I'm still not sure I believe. Sometimes I tell myself it's not real, only because I can't bear the alternative. But then I met this friend and he told me, he told me to either accept the truth or to put it aside in my heart. I think that's what he said. I'm pretty sure. Anyway, things got better after that. Much better. And as I went along, I found that the truth wasn't as terrible as I first thought it was. I just had to adjust my definition of reality a little. I had to change, you know…change."

"Change?" Sarah blurted. Shakily, she slipped onto the seat of the chair, her hands curling around the edge of the desk in front of her. "Max, I don't know what philosophical crap you're rambling on about, but you don't seem to realize that there's a huge guy with wings standing out there in the hallway. He's standing right there…in the hallway!"

Her rising hysteria was obvious and it drew Max away from her languid position by the desk. She stepped closer to Sarah, bending slightly at the waist so that she could look the woman in the eye. "It's okay," she said, her voice a soothing mantra, "it's okay, really. I know him."

Sarah glanced around her wildly. "How?" she asked, even as she sank further into herself, even as she withdrew from the ugly tempest that surrounded her into the quiet comfort of her own denial.

And Gabriel couldn't help himself. He inched forward, creeping closer to the door until his face was nearly pressed against the crack. He looked at the young mother, the thin, trembling woman who was so alone and so frightened, yet another orphan of the great tragedy that had destroyed most of her race. For the first time, Gabriel experienced a powerful twinge of sympathy for another human besides Max and Jack. His compassion was stirred when he gazed upon her and he thought of Mary, the Blessed Virgin, who had once been a terrified young mother as well.

"Tell me how, Max," Sarah demanded again. "Tell me how."

Max, for her part, seemed thrown a bit off her guard. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, her eyes blinking furiously. "I don't know," she said at length. "Sarah, I wish I could tell you, but I don't know. I found him. He found me. I'm not sure of anything, but I do know it happened."

"How?" Sarah repeated uselessly.

Max shook her head. "You shouldn't ask that, because you know there's not going to be an easy answer, for me or for you. Like my mom used to say, _It is what is_. I don't want to get into all the details now. I don't want to sit here and tell you my story. It's not important, really. And it won't change anything, I promise you that. So let's leave it at this, okay? Gabriel found me. I found him. And we've been helping each other. That's what happened, Sarah. And really, that's all you need to know."

There was a pause. Gabriel was surprised to find that his own breathing had gotten shallow, his heart pumping in a rhythm that was not exactly steady. He had never imagined how difficult it had been for Max to accept his mere existence, to embrace the presence of a creature who was both foreign and frightening and not entirely kind. It was, he reasoned, quite a miracle that she hadn't put a bullet in his head the first time she encountered him. Or perhaps she had already been changed when she came down into the gully with Jack and saw him lying there with dust on his armor and blood on his skin and his wings, his great, lethal wings.

Gabriel closed his eyes for an instant, considering. It was, he thought, quite another miracle that _he_ hadn't killed _her_ outright, hadn't driven the cruel, unyielding weight of his mace through her frail human body.

Something had been working in both of them that night and its true manifestation was evident only now, in his sympathy for her and her love for him. What had happened between them resounded with fate and destiny and all those high ideals that seemed so impractical, yet real when finally understood.

And Gabriel felt at peace then, because he realized that he was exactly where he was supposed to be in that moment. No place else. Just with her.

Max knew it to and that knowing grounded her conviction, allowed her to soothe Sarah with gentle support. She had walked the path of disbelief before and emerged with the scales fallen from her eyes. Approaching the shocked woman now, Max crouched by her chair, both her hands, the wounded and the unwounded, falling atop her knee.

"Hey," she said, her voice edged with her typical grudging gruffness, "I never said any of this would be easy. It isn't, but you get through it. Somehow."

Sarah laughed a little, the sound resigned, painful. She brushed her tears away with shaking fingers. "I must sound ungrateful," she said, "acting suspicious, getting all paranoid."

"You're allowed to," Max replied.

"But you saved our lives," Sarah said, a sigh escaping her, filling her tiny, beaten body with a sudden swell of emotion. "Both…both of you did. You and…and Gabriel."

Max's lips spread in a wide grin, showing her teeth. "You know, it took me a while to even say his name," she said. "Already you have more faith than me."

Sarah's head dropped. "I don't know about that. I'm more…faithless, I think. Or hopeless, maybe. It's kind of the same thing."

"Not really."

"I haven't been outside this school in two weeks," Sarah continued on. Gabriel noticed she was holding Max's good hand now, the contact between the two women tentative, yet undeniably comforting to them both. "I haven't left the gym in two weeks, but I feel like I know what's out there. Nothing."

"Well." Max raised her eyebrows, looking empathetic. "There is _always_ something."

"But then you showed up," Sarah said. "God, somehow you showed up."

Max chewed on her lip. "Surprise."

Sarah blinked, the tears in her eyes lessening, her curiosity becoming evident. "How the hell did you do it?" she asked at length. "How'd you find us, Max?"

Max exhaled sharply and there was a slight hint of hesitance about her features, a tightening of her thin lips, a squinting of her grey eyes. "Well," she said slowly, "I'll tell you one thing, it definitely wasn't luck."

Gabriel grinned a little at that, amused. Absentmindedly, he reached out and touched the edge of the half-open door, his palm lingering over the lock, fingers twisting over the cold metal knob. Max, he knew, always leaned towards the mysterious, adopting a tone that was vague as opposed to uncertain, aloof instead of outright arrogant. It was a game she played with herself, with her own doubt and insecurities and in a strange way, it made her seem trustworthy. And she never said what she didn't mean. Never.

"The note you left at your house helped," Max admitted. With a groan, she pushed herself to her feet and stretched her calves, which had obviously gotten sore from crouching. "It wasn't that hard to find you afterwards."

"Yeah," Sarah replied, throwing her arm heavily over her desk, "but I never thought you'd be looking for us."

"Why not?" Max asked.

"Because," Sarah said, appearing a little embarrassed, "when something bad, when something so horrendous happens, people usually only care about themselves. About their families-"

"My family is dead," Max said quickly, spitting the words out so they wouldn't linger long enough to hurt her.

Sarah glanced up, the edge of her ponytail swinging across her neck. "Max…oh my God."

"All of them," she replied, brushing over Sarah's sympathy with her usual hardness. "All of them. I have no one left."

Gabriel pressed his head to the edge of the door. He knew Max well enough to hear her pain, to search for it in the places she thought she kept it hidden. Her mystery was not complete and he liked to think that he knew most of her secrets, the ones that decorated her worn body, the trailing scars, the shrapnel of so many past wars.

And he thought, he felt that she must recognize the same in him. Surprisingly, he was not daunted by the threat of exposure, of vulnerability. It could be liberating, in a way. It could be renewing. Life-giving. And they were all being reborn now, even though the earth had already died around them.

Max suddenly seemed a bit uncomfortable, as if she had somehow picked up on the notion herself and been disturbed by it. He noticed her pace back over to the large teacher's desk. The soles of her shoes left footprints on the tiled floor, the gritty shadows of Mojave dust and sand.

"And it's my job, you know," she said, another shrug bringing her shoulders up close to her neck. "It's my job to…to help people. I'm a cop."

_Prophet_, Gabriel thought, but said nothing.

"Of course I'd come looking for you," she continued. "What? Did you think all those times you invited me over for barbeques and included me in your life were for shit? I care, Sarah. I care about this. About people. Humans. We all ended up in this somehow and I figure we have a choice. We can either be like those people…those people out there that were willing to break-in here, guns blazing, killing women and children for a couple of cans of food. Or we can be something else, what we really should be. We can be better."

_Yes. _Gabriel felt excitement stir within him. _Yes. _She was close now, he thought. So very close. Reaching. Striving. And he had guided her there. It had been him. It had been…them.

Silence. Max turned away from Sarah, her back arching as she slumped over, her good hand outstretched and braced on the desk. The morning light had crept further into the room, invading the blue shades of dark, forming the impermanent grey shapes of the furniture into definite planes and hard corners. Motes of dust floated in the honey-colored air. There was a cross on the wall above the blackboard. Papers, dull sketches of mitochondria and cells and chains of DNA had been tacked to the back wall. A few textbooks had fallen from a bookshelf and landed cover up on the floor. Gabriel wondered how many of the children who had once inhabited the classroom were now dead. Most of them, probably, if not all.

Max lifted her head, the knotted strands of her light hair falling over her collar. "I believe," she said slowly, reluctantly, "there is an elephant in the room."

Sarah started crying then. She put her hands up to her face and covered her eyes, her thin chest expanding as she sucked in a long, deep breath and let it out as a sob. "I can't," she wept.

"You can," Max urged and Gabriel thought of all the times he had urged her, pushed her far beyond the limits of her comfortable doubt into a world were faith was the norm, the painful, uncompromising norm.

And she had pushed him too. Oh, how she had pushed him.

"I didn't want to ask," Sarah said. She was searching in the pockets of her dirty pajama pants, pulling out a crumbled tissue. "I couldn't ask you right away, because saying it would just make it true. I thought I could pretend for a while, even though I know better. I thought I could…I don't know, kid myself. But I'm not that stupid. God, I wish I was that stupid."

Max shifted her weight, one knee bent, her gaze directed over her shoulder at the woman. "Best to get it out, then," she said. "Just say it, Sarah. Don't hold back."

Sarah threw her tissue down on the desk, abandoned. "Joe," she cried. "He's dead, isn't he?"

As Gabriel stood there listening, he suddenly found himself thinking of the woman's children. She had children, didn't she? Max had said they were young.

And now without a father.

Max didn't speak, but let Sarah talk. She stayed by the desk and gave the woman room to air her grief unhindered. The distance between them spoke not of regret, but respect. Gabriel knew that Max wouldn't encroach upon her sorrow. It was not her place.

"When I saw you," Sarah said, her words bubbling through her tears, "I knew it was over, that hope I'd been holding onto. If Joe wasn't with you, if he didn't come with you to save us, then there was no denying it. He wouldn't leave us."

"Unless he had to," Max said. "He's in a better place, Sarah."

"That's clichéd bullcrap," Sarah spat.

Max raised her chin, her expression acquiescent. "Yeah, you're right, it is. But the truth is, there is nothing much else I can say. Believe me, I know. I'm not even going to say _I'm sorry_ and I'm sure as hell not going to stand here and tell you that everything will be all right, you'll heal, you'll feel better. Because I don't know if that's true or not. I haven't found out for myself yet."

Her honesty, thought harsh, was meaningful and it reminded Gabriel of why he loved her.

Sarah dropped her hands onto her lap. She looked very small, sitting there. A figure of frailty. "Just tell me how it happened," she said. "I think I want to know."

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Sarah didn't bother to wipe her tears anymore. "Yeah, cause the questions will kill me."

Slowly, Max turned around to face the woman. She crossed her uninjured arm over her chest and let the other dangle uselessly by her side. "All right," she said. "It was when the trouble started, back a couple of weeks ago."

"Two weeks," Sarah supplemented softly.

Max shook her head. "Yeah, I guess. Two weeks ago. We were out on patrol, Joe and I. It was a pretty typical night. And then, well, I guess everything started going to shit, because we got a call about shots fired. Of course we didn't realize what was happening right away. I mean, who does. There's nothing unusual about shots fired. I see it all the time. But by the time we got to the scene, it started to become obvious…we started to see…" She trailed off, the hand across her middle tightening into a fist. "It was quick, Sarah. So quick. No suffering. He didn't…he probably didn't know what hit him. Didn't have time to be scared or anything."

It was a lie, that much Gabriel knew. Max had related a bit of the story of her partner's death to him and according to her, the man had not passed gently from the world. The end had been violent, bloody, and, in all likelihood, terrifying. But Sarah didn't need to know that and Max was softening the blow, attempting to erase a past that probably was best left forgotten.

Gabriel could not condemn her for the lie. It was not vicious. It was not hurtful, only a small act of grace meant to shield the weak. And Max would be willing to take the burden of the small sin onto her soul.

In a way, Gabriel thought that made her blessed.

"It's over, Sarah," Max said, her words adding a bit of extra finality to the already resigned atmosphere of the room. "You're not gonna wanna hear this," she continued in a tone that overrode the woman's quiet sobs, "but we have other things to think of. And I know you've already thought of them too. You're kids, you're precious little babies-"

"It's what Joe would want," Sarah blurted out, reaching for her tissue again.

Max nodded. "Exactly. The two of us need to figure out what we're going to do next. How we're going to keep those kids safe."

Sarah looked around her, her bleary eyes glancing at the door and out into the hall. Gabriel immediately withdrew, although he thought she might have caught a quick glimpse of him.

"Not here," Sarah said in a thick voice. "We can't keep them here."

"And you said you're out of food?" Max asked.

Sarah let out a short, harsh laugh, her face pale, her eyes streaked with red. "It's what makes it so awful," she said, dabbing at her nose with the tissue. "Those men broke in here, they killed Bernard because they thought we were hoarding food. But we don't have anything. There's nothing left. We're starving. My babies-"

"That's not gonna happen," Max said finally. In an instant, she had crossed the distance between them and put her good hand on Sarah's shoulder. "Don't even think about that, all right? You're not going to let them starve. Listen, I know you feel like sitting here now and just crying. I know you probably think there's not much use in carrying on, dragging yourself through the next day…but those kids. They're everything, Sarah. You're not living anymore, no, you're living for _them_. That's it. That's all there is. I'm not going to lie to you, the world out there has gone to shit. It's fucked the hell up. But you've got your kids. You've got them. And we're going to do something about all this…we're going to find food and a safe place for you guys to stay, yeah? This isn't going to be easy, but it's not impossible. And I'm going to help you with it. I'm here to help now."

As she spoke, Gabriel hearkened to the quiet acceptance in her voice, the gradual understanding that only she could reach in her own mind, even though he had been the one to guide her to it. They were almost there, he realized. They were nearly there…

Sarah balled up her tissue in her hand, her expression forlorn and wilted. "We can't stay here," she said. "This place isn't safe anymore."

"No and neither is your house," Max added. She rounded the desk, keeping her hand on Sarah's shoulder, her eyes focused out the window. The shades were still drawn, but Gabriel knew she was looking beyond them, beyond the school, beyond the city, which was already decaying, a corpse left out to rot. And there had only been one place where the world was still untouched. Still free from the ravages of man.

It had been like Eden, he thought. Almost. _Almost._

"We need to leave L.A.," Max said abruptly. "More people may gravitate towards the cities, looking for food, shelter. We have to get out. Go some place else. Some place isolated."

"Where?" Sarah asked.

But Gabriel already knew.

"My grandma," Max said, her hand falling off Sarah's shoulder as she moved a step closer to the window, "has an old horse farm about five hours from L.A.. It's in the Mojave. The house itself isn't big, but there's tons of space. The old barn is still in pretty good shape too. If I remember correctly, it used to have heated stalls…not that the electricity is working right now, although maybe we can figure something out."

"What are you saying?" Sarah asked. She swiveled around in her chair to look at Max.

Gabriel's heart thudded in his chest. His excitement had turned to pure adrenalin, to purpose, to drive. Unable to contain himself, he slipped inside the room, easing his bulky frame through the door in order to get a better look at Max.

She didn't see him though. She didn't even know he was there.

"I'm saying," Max replied, "we take your kids and we get the hell out of this city. We'll bring them to the ranch and it'll be safe there. I have some food and we can find more. It won't be much, but it's a start, Sarah. It's a very small start."

The sliver of sunlight that snuck in underneath the window shades fell across Max's shoes, throwing a shadow onto her face. As he watched her, Gabriel wondered if she realized what she had done…what she was doing.

It was a miracle. A revelation of the holy in the profane. A reminder that men had, at one time, been images of God. It was then, standing there with her, watching the sun and the shadow, seeing her eyes and the glimpse of her soul that they held, Gabriel recognized that his faith had been restored.

But when, he mused, had it first been shaken?

And then remembered Eve. He remembered Eve.

But Max was nothing like Eve and neither was Sarah. They were women reborn and in them there was a yearning tenderness, the trembling of new souls recently blessed.

_Promise_, Gabriel thought. The world would awaken again in them, through them.

He smiled.

Sarah's eyes were also on Max and she didn't see him lingering just inside the door. Craning her neck, she glanced over her shoulder at her friend, the marks of her many, many tears still shining on her cheeks. "What about the others?" she asked.

Max flinched. "The others?"

"I can't just leave them," Sarah continued. "They're about a dozen of them still left and they're all families too, Max. Kids. Mothers. If we leave them here-"

"Who said anything about that?" Max asked, wheeling around. The sunlight crept up her back, turning her dirty hair gold for an instant. Only for an instant. "We'll take them with us too," she said. "It's just a matter of finding transport. I'm sure there has to be a city bus around here and we can probably scavenge enough gas. And hey, the drive won't be too bad. No traffic."

"No traffic," Sarah said numbly. She still didn't seem convinced.

"Look." Max ambled over to her chair. "Why don't you go downstairs and talk it over with everyone. Let me know who's game and who isn't and we'll go from there. But really, Sarah, I think this is our best shot. I'm not saying it's ideal, but it's something. A plan. And a plan is better than waiting…better than all this endless waiting."

Sarah sighed, stuffing her crumpled up tissue back in her pants' pocket. She pushed herself up from her chair and stood still for a minute, her legs shaking. "I don't think anyone is going to argue with you, Max," she said. "And neither will I. You seem to know what you're talking about."

"Yup," Max said. Her forced laugh was an obvious attempt to cover up for her own insecurity. "We'll start getting things in motion. We'll start-"

Both women stopped short of the door, their eyes finally finding Gabriel. Sarah gawked at him nervously, paralyzed by his overwhelming presence, his towering height and wide frame and bulky wings, which were tucked close to his shoulders.

This time, Gabriel tried to meet the woman's gaze and he stepped aside courteously, giving her room to slip through the door. She didn't move for a few seconds and it took a small push from Max to urge her out the door. Gabriel let her pass by him, keeping his gaze benevolent as she darted across his path like a frightened little rabbit. He waited until she was a few safe steps away before he called to her.

"Sarah?"

Her entire body jolted when he spoke, her arms hugged close to her torso, her head hanging heavy on her neck. She seemed to withdraw inside herself, pull together in a protective posture that made Gabriel's heart ache ever so slightly.

But she had courage yet, this woman. She had courage when she turned around and answered him. "Yes?" she asked, her hands knotted underneath her chin.

Gratitude surged within Gabriel. He felt blessed by her simple acknowledgement. "Your children," he said, holding to his place by the door so as not to startle her further, "what are their names?"

Slowly, Sarah lowered her hands, wrapping her arms around her stomach instead. "Alex and Ashley," she blurted out, then turned on her heel, trotting back down the long hall. The stairwell door swung open and Sarah quickly disappeared through it, her exit hasty. Gabriel, however, found that he was satisfied by their meager contact. He was satisfied.

"Making friends already?" Max asked, her expression sour as she watched him from inside the classroom.

Gabriel walked through the door towards her. "Yes," he said. "I am trying."

"You were nice to her," Max said, sticking her chin out at him. "How come you were nice to her and so pissy with me when we first met?"

"Because," Gabriel replied, attempting to imitate her vernacular, "you needed someone to be _pissy_ with you."

Max shook her head, her disgust tempered by a bit of ill-disguised amusement. "All right, all right," she said. "I get it." She strolled back over to the desk and pressed her side to the overhanging lip. "I…I can't really believe what I just did."

"Neither can I," Gabriel replied. He hovered behind her, his wide shadow cutting across the errant beams of sunlight that managed to trickle past the shades. For the first time, he became aware of his physicality in relation to hers, his large hands, her small, callous-creased palms. His broad, winged shoulders, her stooped posture. Gabriel thought back to the moment they had shared in the apartment living room, how Max, tiny, weak Max, had managed to conquer him, to bring him down to her level for a sweet, simple kiss.

He wanted to repay the grace that she had given him. And he wanted her to know, in the most unquestionable way, that she was loved. Cherished. Protected.

Gabriel bent awkwardly at the waist, meaning to bestow a feather-light kiss on top of her head. But at the last moment, she moved, disturbing the balance between them, filling it with tension and anger and perhaps, yes perhaps some resentment.

"Well," she said, whirling around, her good hand on her hip, her bearing pitifully defiant, "I hope you realize, I've gone and completely fucked myself over now."

Gabriel blinked down at her, aghast. "Pardon?" he asked, feeling regrettably lost for words.

Max stared up at him. She met his gaze. Held it. She offered him a view of her soul, the radiant, Heaven-blessed resilience within, the only thing of true purity a man could hope to possess.

And as he looked at Max, as he saw her eyes and then saw past them, Gabriel remembered what she had asked him back at the apartment.

_Gabriel, what does my soul look like?_

"Beautiful," he told her, his hand finding her chin, his fingers touching her cheeks, which were still gritty with sweat.

Max let him hold her for a second, but then she raised her hand and pulled his wrist away. He could feel her fingers shaking as they closed over his forearm.

"Maybe we should run away," she said. "Right now. It's like you said before, I don't have to do this."

"No,' Gabriel said, the word dragging in his throat until his voice was hoarse. The uncertainty, he knew, was the worst of it, the very worst. And they were almost there. They were nearly there…

"I told Sarah I'd help her," Max said, her eyes suddenly brimming with miserable tears and the worst kind of doubt, doubt in herself. "I told all those people."

"Families," he reminded her. "Children."

Max lowered her head. "Like Jack."

"Yes." His heavy hands fell atop her shoulders, keeping her there with him, keeping her close and steady. "Yes, like Jack."

Max leaned into him, her forehead touching his chest. He could feel her breathing, he could feel her life moving against his.

"Gabriel," she said, his name a prayer on her lips, "what do I do now?"

But he couldn't tell her anything. "I believe," he said, surprised when he found himself crying for her, "that the choice is yours."

* * *

**Author's Note: **Agh! Only one chapter left. What am I going to do when this story is over? Hmm, I feel happy, relieved and sad all at the same time.

Seriously though, just because this fic is ending doesn't mean I'll be leaving the fandom. I have two other WIPs and I've grown way too attached to the Legion universe over the past couple of months to stop writing right now. I know a few people have been asking for a sequel and I have to be honest, I don't have any ideas for a second "Absolution". However, I have been toying with the idea for a follow-up one-shot, just because Jack never really got a chance to say goodbye and I think he deserves one. In addition, you know I am always open to feedback from readers, so if there's something you'd like to see in the future, sound off. I never know when my muse will strike. ;)

Thanks so much for reading! The next (and last) chapter is in the works and should be posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!

_*Credit for the line "Human cop and heavenly one" goes to saichick, who mentioned it in one of her reviews. Thanks, saichick!_


	26. Chapter Twenty Six Absolved

**Author's Note: **Well, here we are, the last chapter. I would have had this posted much sooner, but my flash drive crashed this week and I lost about half of what I had written, which was quite frustrating. And, of course, it's always hard to let go of a story and I definitely think I'm suffering from a little separation anxiety disorder here, haha.

Before we begin, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read and review this story. Your interest, support and encouragement truly means the world to me and I honestly cannot thank you all enough for believing in this fic and pushing me along. So, once more, thank you from the bottom of my heart!

Hmm, I guess I can't stall any longer. So without further ado, I present the final chapter. I do hope you enjoy!

**Disclaimer: **I claim no ownership of Legion.

**Chapter Twenty-Six Absolved**

_One month later_

The sky was welcoming. Gabriel dove headfirst into the sphere of azure, enjoying the heat of the sun on his wings. It had been a long time since he had flown for the mere joy of it. Over the years, the exercise had invariably become associated with necessity. It was a means of transportation, of getting from one place to another without any acknowledgement as to the method. Somewhere along the way, he had lost his wonderment, had failed to marvel at the utter miracle of his life, which was indeed blessed. And it had been a long time, Gabriel realized, as he swooped low beneath the trailing, tender vapors of a morning cloud, since he had allowed himself to feel blessed.

The notion itself was individualistic, selfish, a treasure that he had hoarded and guarded with all the tenacity of watchful dragon. But Gabriel did not allow shame or reproach to color his thoughts. He opened his wings and embraced the intemperate bursts of air. He opened his heart and accepted his blessing, which was his and his alone.

And hers, perhaps. She had always been blessed…

Gabriel dropped beneath the last bank of soft haze that shielded the earth from the ever-clear reaches of the sky. He was slipping from one world to the next, crossing a border that was defined only in the poet hearts of wise saints and mystics. Above existed the promise of Paradise, but below him was the vast expanse of mortal earth, the sandy, golden belly of the world. As he descended, slowly, taking his time and savoring each gust of wind that whispered through his feathers, Gabriel's keen eyes noticed familiar landmarks. The snow-crowned mountains, the low, rocky valleys browned by the sun, the curling roadway that led up to the property and the ranch itself. He saw the old barn first, the paddocks, the tack shed….

There were more cars in the driveway now, he realized, along with a yellow school bus. Max's squad car poked its white nose out of the open garage door.

Gabriel shifted in mid-air, thrusting his legs perpendicular to the ground. He landed by one of the paddocks in a spray of gritty dust and echoed sunlight. Michael was waiting for him, his posture casual and collected, the curve of his lithe shoulders suggesting perfect ease. But his eyes were wide, a reflection of cherished youth. There was mirth in his gaze and on his lips.

"I thought I'd lost you," his brother said, throwing the words over his shoulder with a crooked smile. "But I see now that you delight in idleness. Dear Gabriel, I feel I must warn you, you are dangerously close to becoming a romantic."

Gabriel flushed, but it was the heat of the sun that warmed his cheeks. Turning his head, he looked out over the property. The once barren landscape had suddenly been populated. A few human men, Jeep among them, were standing by the barn, patching the holes in the open windows with plywood. A woman walked up the path from the house, two plastic jugs of water tucked under her arms. Sarah was folding a stack of blankets on the picnic table. Her children were nearby, hanging off the fence posts, little Ashley playing with a doll in a cardboard shoebox, her brother Alex trying to form a game of tag with several other children who had gathered around him.

"We said," he shouted indignantly, "we said the bench was home base, not the shed. I never said it was the shed!"

Gabriel listened to their chatter, to the slapping of Sarah's wet sheets as she shook them out, to the steady heartbeat of a nail being pounded into plywood.

He glanced at Michael, his eyebrows jumping up his forehead. "This place used to be quiet," he said.

Michael grinned, his eyes catching the afternoon light. "Yes," he said, "but have you ever heard such beautiful noise?"

Gabriel said nothing, knowing that his silence would be taken as a sign of agreement. He craned his neck once more and tried to see beyond the broad back of the house. He was searching, he was searching for her…

Michael laughed suddenly, the sound too loud, almost rude. "I know who you are looking for," he said.

Gabriel glanced at his feet. The heat rose in his cheeks and for some reason, he thought of her smile, her lips.

_Max._

Was it horrible that he wanted so desperately to see her? It might be, but he was shocked to realize that he didn't care.

Without waiting for Michael, who had lately turned too capricious for him, Gabriel edged his way around the house, skirting the narrow path which had already been taken up by the woman with the water jugs. She was on her return trip now, the clear containers empty and swinging lightly from her hands. When she saw Gabriel, her eyes widened, as if she had caught a glimpse of something that embarrassed her…or maybe made her uncomfortable.

Gabriel tried to smile for her. He truly tried.

The woman ducked her head when she scurried past him, a nervous little field mouse bounding back into the wild. Gabriel caught the scent of her fear in the air. It was unforgiving, the odor of distrust, and it had a tendency to linger. There had been a time, he knew, when men had welcomed his presence, but these humans did not resemble their celestial-minded ancestors.

Damaged, Gabriel told himself. They were damaged yet.

He rounded the side of the house, squeezing himself passed the parked cars and the school bus, which had the words _St. Mary's High School _printed on the sides in square, black letters. She was close by, he felt. And she was waiting for him.

_Yes, yes_, he was so blessed to have someone waiting for him.

He found her by the front of the house, along with Charlie. The two women were standing on opposite sides of a wide, metal box. Max had her hand on the lid and she brazenly stuck her head inside, fiddling with a charred grate that squatted over the otherwise hollow interior.

"It's a nice grill," she said. "I just don't know what the fuck we're going to do with it."

"Grill," Charlie said pointedly, bouncing Robbie gently on her hip. The baby was fussing with a pacifier Michael had found for him a few weeks ago, although in truth, Gabriel didn't know if the trinket was more of a gift for the child or for Charlie, who could never seem to keep her son quiet.

"And you know," the woman said, leaning over Max with a frown, "you really shouldn't cuss like that. There's tons of kids round here now."

"I'm sorry." Max removed her head and slammed the lid of the grill closed. "I was a patrol cop for fourteen years and let me tell you, we don't speak in nursery rhymes out there. Shit, I got rust all over my pants." She brushed furiously at a few red flakes on her thighs.

Charlie shook her mane of gold curls. "Come on, now, hun."

"I thought we had a talk about that." Max slapped her hand authoritatively on the top of the grill. "I told you how much I hate that, when you call me _hun. _It's condescending."

"Well, can you stop being a bitch for five minutes?" Charlie said, her voice raised a notch.

Robbie dropped his pacifier.

Max jerked a finger at them both. "There's that truck stop mouth."

"Oh please." Charlie was bending her knees, trying to reach for the pacifier.

Max groaned and finally retrieved it herself. "Don't give it to him now," she warned, shaking a few beads of sand off it before handing the toy back to Charlie. "It's got gunk all over it."

And that's when Charlie broke into a smile. A tried, beautiful, wonderful smile. She smiled, oh, she smiled.

Their argument, Gabriel felt, had been nothing short of amicable. It was a pleasant change to witness such content bickering, the mild, half-hearted jabs delivered more with affection than actual ill-will. Gabriel knew that Max was not a tender soul. She never had been and she never would be. And there was a large part of her that needed to retain her sharpness, to keep hold of all the strange little idiosyncrasies that defined her. The woman was completely and undeniably tough, although Gabriel liked to think of her as a strong. It made more sense to him to see her that way, allowed his heart to connect with hers first on a visceral level. They were the same and she was his. Yes, _his._

Gabriel found he almost hated to interrupt their wild chattering, the words that Charlie and Max flung at each other with such vivacity. But he had become selfish in a way, desirous to assuage the personal longing he had never before recognized.

He took a tentative step forward, his large, winged body feeling out of place in an otherwise human haven. It was always hard, this first moment, this initial greeting. He never knew quite what to do.

"Hello," Gabriel said lowly, feeling timid for perhaps the first time in his life.

Max jerked around, her short ponytail swinging. "Oh, hey!" She looked startled, as if she had never seen him before and he enjoyed the quiet awe that filled her eyes when she glanced at him. "Where the hell have you been? I haven't seen you for a while, it seems. A couple of days."

"Five," Gabriel corrected. He allowed himself a minute to absorb her presence, to appreciate all the things he had always been so careless to overlook. The messiness of her hair. The scuffs on her shoes. The wristwatch she still wore even though it ran ten minutes slow. Lovely. They were all lovely.

Max had finally given up on her police uniform, which was ripped and dirtied and bloodied beyond repair. Lately, he had had found her wearing some less distinct attire, a pair of jeans and a black turtleneck. She did, however, keep her shield pinned to her chest and her gun belt was continuously fastened around her waist. Michael had told her once that she looked like a vigilante. Gabriel, however, thought she looked appropriate.

"You notice when I am gone?" he asked her.

Charlie made a _pfft_ sound under her breath. "Sorry, but I gotta wash off Robbie's pacifier or he's gonna be screaming in about two seconds," she said, trailing up towards the house with her son in tow.

Gabriel couldn't help it, he watched them go, his eyes finding the child's face that rested so peacefully on his mother's shoulder. And try as he might, the angel could not find the promise within, the holy mystery that had been imprinted on his innocent soul. But he was certain it was there, hidden away from the world, a treasured secret, that would one day bloom into salvation. Not now, though. No, yet.

When Charlie was gone, leaving them alone, Max suddenly became sheepish. Turning towards the grill, she twisted and played with a few of the black knobs on the front. "This guy and his daughter showed up two days ago looking for shelter," she explained. "He had nothing with him but his car and this grill. I have no idea what he was planning to do with it, but he gave it to me. Now, suddenly, it's my problem. I don't want to insult him, but really." She threw a cautious look over her shoulder at the angel. "Any ideas?"

"None at all," Gabriel admitted. He did seize the opportunity to stand next to her though, peering at the metal contraption as if he knew absolutely everything about human cooking.

Max squared her hips, the sunlight hitting her face and making her squint until her eyes were tight slivers, crescent moons. "And by the way," she said quietly, "I do notice when you are gone."

And oh, Gabriel thought, it was all worth it. So easily, so effortlessly, she had made it worth it.

"I apologize," he said, more than willing to appease her, "but I thought you would want time alone…to settle things. I hope you realize, you have worked wonders already."

"You know I'm not a fan of flattery," Max said, but she blushed nonetheless.

Gabriel had the overwhelming urge to touch her then…and he gave into to it. Reaching forward, he brushed his finger carefully against her warm cheek. Max flinched, but her lips twitched into a smile.

"You have a wretched habit of thinking poorly of yourself," the angel told her. "I wish you wouldn't."

Max shook her head, pulling away from him. "I'm realistic," she said, "there's nothing wrong with that."

Gabriel fell silent. He knew he wouldn't be able to convince her otherwise. As in all things, she would have to discover the truth for herself. Instead, he satisfied himself with her presence, savoring all the things about her he had come to admire, the habits and eccentricities and almost unnoticeable traits he had once ignored or failed to recognize at all. Max was staring at her shoes, her hands tapping out an uneven cadence of the lid of the grill. Rust colored her fingertips a dusty red.

"By the way," she said after a while, "It's good to see you."

Her sentiment warmed him, stirred to life the affection in his soul that was once so foreign, but now secondhand. Gabriel wanted to tell her how much that pleased him, and yet he held back. There were some things, after all, that were best left unspoken.

"But I feel kinda selfish," Max said. She turned, giving him a view of her profile, the faint, frowning tilt of her mouth. "I feel like I shouldn't want you to be with me all the time, when you really belong to the world."

Gabriel had to look away for an instant, his emotions treacherous. For the first time in his life, he thought his heart might be too weak to accommodate such love, _her_ love. And it was evident to him now…Max cared for him.

"I can be both," he said gently. "I can belong to you and to the world."

Max exhaled sharply through her nose. "It doesn't feel that way."

_Because you belong to the world too, _Gabriel thought. He felt blessed to know such things about her, the secrets that were concealed but would one day come to life. And he would witness their birth, their growth. He would witness the revelation of what she was, of what she been all along…a worthy being, a good woman.

How had he not seen it before? How?

"Listen to me," Max said, forcing a laugh into her words. She let her hands fall from the lid of the grill and rubbed them briskly on the seat of her pants. "When I'm around you, I turn into some highbrow intellectual, spewing bullcrap."

_Or a prophet_, Gabriel told himself. Max was slow to realize, that he knew. It would take time and patience. They would both have to learn so many things, but they would do it together. _Together._

He took a step back from her, allowing her time to digest all that she had been told and all that she already knew. But the space between them, the very air, was filled with all that remained unspoken, all the things left unsaid. Gabriel wondered if Max would ever find the courage to open her soul. And he wondered if he would be strong enough to listen to her.

Time crowded around them and he was reminded of a similar instance when they had stood together in the narrow hallway outside of Jack's bedroom, when the world itself had surrounded them and their lives were suddenly forfeited, belonging, perhaps, not to themselves, but to each other. It was a terrible moment and it was also beautiful. It filled them both and laced their veins with promise and hope and the vague concept of fate.

Gabriel felt the weight of it all bearing down on him, crushing him. He took a deep breath and filled his lungs with clean air.

"Do you have time," he asked, "to take a walk with me?"

Max raised her eyebrows, the lingering scar on her brow bunching. "Not really," she said. "But I can make time for you."

And before Gabriel could say anything else, she laughed, the sound echoing Michael's, loud and rude and bold.

"God, if that isn't the shittiest pick-up line," she said. "And I know a few things about shitty pick-up lines. Did I ever tell you about this one time when this guy I was arresting asked me out? Yeah, well, I told him I have a strict policy, the I-don't-date-people-I've-just-arrested policy. God, oh God. But yeah, let's go for a walk. It's better than standing here. It's better than all this-"

"Waiting," Gabriel supplied.

Max's face collapsed. She almost looked as if she were about to cry. Or rejoice. But when she spoke, her voice was quiet, a gentle whisper she gifted to him who was accustomed only to the hardness of the world.

"Yeah," she said. "Yeah."

Gabriel smiled. He took her hand in his.

* * *

They took the old bridle path, followed it as they had so long ago. They walked out into the open country, where the world was still wild and wide and untouched by the ravages by man. And it was like Eden. Just like Eden.

The day was tending towards warm and the sun was surprisingly benevolent. Late February hinted at spring and Gabriel enjoyed all the quiet signs of awakening, the feel of the frozen soil now thawing beneath his feet, the streaks of pale light on the sun-bleached rocks, the evocative whisper of the air, which was mild and not cold. A bird wheeled overhead and he admired the short span of the creature's wings. Simplicity was beautiful. It was blessed.

If Max appreciated the scenery, however, she gave absolutely no indication. Walking by his side, her steps steady if not a bit slow, she continuously raked her hands through her hair, pulling back the loose strands that the wind tossed over her forehead. Gabriel wanted to tell her that she too looked beautiful, that her life was also awakened by the promise of spring, of rebirth, but he found that silence was more appropriate.

When they came to a bend in the bridle path, the place where the trail left the outer reaches of the ranch and branched out into the open country, Max paused. She put her back to the wilderness and looked towards the small stirrings of civilization, towards the world she had unknowingly created. Her face was inscrutable and she raised her chin, rejecting all that lay before her in one last act of defiance.

Gabriel followed her gaze to the barn. The human men had already been joined by Michael and his brother was helping them fix another square of plywood over a window.

Max's laugh startled him. She shook her head. "He certainly does get around, doesn't he?"

Gabriel offered her an acquiescent shrug. "Michael was never passive about things."

"Sometimes I wish I cared that much. Must be an angel thing," Max replied. She shifted her gaze to the house, where Charlie had joined Sarah in doing the laundry.

"Look at all this," Max muttered and there was awe in her voice when she spoke, along with the small, nearly imperceptible accents of fear. "Would you look at all this?"

Gabriel felt that she needed to be comforted. He was going to place his hand on her shoulder, he was going to pull her close to him and allow her to tremble and shake and admit her terror, which he knew was real. But in the end, he thought of better of it, keeping his distance, allowing her to stand on the edge, on the cusp of this new dawn, which even now broke over the far-off horizon.

It was a dangerous time. It was a tempestuous moment. So much had changed and Max, he knew, had changed also. It had happened slowly, like the rising of the morning light, like the coming of spring. It had taken her and transformed her and made her into the grave woman who now stood before him, the lone mourner for the dead earth. The prophet.

But it was not a thing of beauty, only heavy sorrow. Responsibility. Toll and strife.

Gabriel raised his hand and attempted place it on her shoulder. But his fingers trembled and he was daunted by his own weakness. Max could not see his uncertainty, only his strength. _God, Father_,_ give her strength._

"You know," Max said, jerking her head in the direction of the house, "ever since we brought that busload of people out here from St. Mary's more survivors have shown up. Some of them aren't even from L.A. We've gone from having about a dozen people here to thirty. All in a month, Gabriel. Why the hell do they keep coming?"

"I think the more apt question is how they ever knew to come here," Gabriel said.

Max glanced at him, her eyebrows arched. When he didn't answer right away, her impatience became evident. "Well?" she asked, the line of her neck tense, her arms swinging anxiously by her sides.

Gabriel did not hesitate. The truth pushed against his lips, insistent, demanding. "There is something to be said for instinct," he replied. "_Human _instinct. These people have found you, Max, because they knew that you were looking for them."

She took a quick step forward, her tone fierce and protective. "I wasn't-"

"You would be a fool to pretend that all this was only about saving Sarah and her children," Gabriel said, a note of driving harshness jumping into his voice.

He thought Max was going to argue with him, he thought she was going to spit his words back at him and return to her safe refuge of denial. But she didn't, she didn't hold onto her misplaced sense of stability. She didn't try to catch at her chaotic life and keep the scattered pieces together. She did not resist, she did not defy, she did not rebel. The acceptance that came, in place of her private revolution, was slow, grains of dust settling on her awareness, covering her with encasing ash. Max stood still and Gabriel watched her, watched her weakness turn into strength until she was fixed as a stone. Permanent. Immovable. She had surrendered and yet, she had won.

The wind fell soft and nearly silent around them. Gabriel let it pull at his breath, relishing in the deepening surge of relief that filled his tired body. They had come far, he knew. They had both come very far.

He tried to reach Max with his eyes, but she seemed to look beyond him, grinding the heels of her shoes against the dirt.

"Yeah, well," she said, "all I know is I got thirty people living on my property now, sleeping in trucks and in the barn. And they all need food and shelter. They all need help. But what if I need help too? What if I'm the one who really needs it?"

Gabriel dropped his gaze. For some reason, the intensity of her eyes was too much to bear. He wanted to tell her that she _did_ have help, that she had him. But Max was smart. She was bold. She already had what she needed, and it was more, perhaps, than he could ever give her.

Max gazed out over the land, her arms folded across her chest. The wind tugged at her hair again, tied it into knots and tangles, but this time she didn't bother to brush it out of her face. Her cheeks were drawn and she looked like a condemned woman. The gallows loomed.

"I gotta be honest with you, Gabriel," she said, lingering on the syllables that formed his name, letting them roll softly over her otherwise caustic tongue, "this is not how I wanted to live my life."

"I know," he said at once, standing as close to her as he dared, hoping his mere presence would help to assuage the throbbing hurt inside of her.

Max hunched her shoulders. "All these people," she said. "They expect me to take care of them now. I can tell…they're looking to me."

He lowered his head, saw the bits of sand and white pebbles beneath his boots. "They are," he conceded.

"And here it is," Max said. She allowed herself another soul-shaking sigh. "I guess I don't really have a choice."

Her words hurt him more than he imagined. They were a desperate plea. They spoke of loneliness. Of dark, deep nights. Of solitude and despair. And he didn't want that for her. He had never wanted it for Max.

"You have a choice," he said, stepping forward and seizing her by the arms, pulling her close to him until they stood together, his heart beating against hers. "You always have a choice, Max."

She hesitated, her teeth dragging across her lip. "I don't know," she said, dropping her voice low so that he had to strain to hear her. There was a tell-tale flush on her cheeks, a hint of embarrassment. "What if I just choose you?"

As she spoke, Gabriel became aware of his hands curled around her arms. His fingers had unknowingly tightened around her biceps and he was certain that he was hurting her. Consciously, he loosened his grip, his hands falling down past her elbows, past her forearms until he held her wrists. She wasn't shaking, he realized. She was standing strong.

"Why do you say that?" he dared to ask her.

And Max did what she always did in the midst of torment and turmoil. She offered him a pained sort of grin and shrugged. "Because I love you."

It was different when they kissed that time. He didn't have to go to her, she didn't have to reach for him, but they came together. He touched his lips to hers, she curved her arm around his neck and smiled, her mouth rising against his. But it couldn't last, it wasn't meant to. Gabriel let her go and she came down off her tip-toes, settling in his shadow with the sadness still in her eyes, but something of faith also.

And there it was. There, _there. _Gabriel said nothing and in the nothingness, he found peace.

They stood close to each other, in quiet contentment, but the joy had already reached them. It had seeped into their bodies and gifted them with life and they couldn't stay still, they couldn't stay still for long.

Max fidgeted, her shoes displacing sand and scattering tiny stones. "Come on," she said, taking his hand in hers. "Let's head back."

They followed the bridle path to its end, looping back towards the old farm where the sound of laughing children could still be heard. Nearby one of the paddocks, Gabriel spotted Alex playing tag with a few of his young friends, their earlier dispute obviously resolved. Watching the children dart across the yard and back, always underneath the long shadow of the tack shed, made his stomach tighten uncomfortably. He was thinking, of course, of another little boy who would never run and play again.

_Jack. Jack…_

Max also seemed to have her nephew on her mind and together, they gravitated dangerously close to the tack shed until it was impossible to avoid the sight of the grave. Pausing by the edge of the mound, the topsoil having hardened as if it had never been disturbed, the cross sitting slightly askew, she let her hand slip from Gabriel's.

"Somehow," she said, "it always comes back to this."

Emotion caused Gabriel's throat to constrict and he did not trust his voice enough to speak. Placing his large hand between her shoulder blades, he felt her breathe, felt her muscles working, her sinews fighting against the agony that always seemed just below the surface. Always there, it would always, always be there…

"This isn't a punishment," Gabriel told her at length. "This is…life."

"Life," Max echoed. "Yeah, it's all about life. And death, it's about death too."

"Death," the angel replied.

Max jammed her hands into her pockets, the toes of her shoes touching the edge of the grave. She had that sad, haunted look about her again and Gabriel realized that she would never lose it, because she had lost _him_.

"Sarah and I were talking the other day," Max said. "She has this crazy idea. She told me we needed to come up with a name for this place. Charlie agreed, of course. Those two seem to agree on everything…it's very annoying. Anyway, they were tossing all sorts of names around. Sarah liked Eden, but Charlie wanted something to do with angels. I don't know, I think when you put a name to a place, it's like…it's like making it permanent. Real, I guess. I'm not sure if I'm ready for it to be real yet."

"In time," Gabriel told her.

Max moved her arms convulsively, as if she were shrugging off her discomfort. "I kind of had this idea," she said, "but I was too embarrassed to tell anyone. It's so corny and ridiculous."

Gabriel watched her, saw the sunlight glinting of the badge on her chest. The golden shield. _Protector. Prophet. _"Go on," he urged.

Max turned around then, she moved away from the grave and she reached out, her hand settling on his arm, just above his vambrace. "I thought," she said, "we could name this place after Jack. Because sometimes I think this is what he wanted, what he always wanted from me. And maybe I can give him that, at least. God, I'd give him everything if I could."

Gabriel was surprised when he found that his eyes were wet, a few errant tears dampening his cheeks. And Max, she was crying too. They both were.

Slowly, the angel took her into his arms, he put his hands around her face and brought her being, her spirit close to his. "Max," he said, rejoicing in her name even though he knew what was to come, the toil, the long hard days, the despair and maybe, just maybe, the hope. "You gave Jack what he needed. You are absolved."

Max looked at him, she met the gaze of an angel and held it. But then she turned away. "No," Max said, glancing out at the ranch, at the caravan of cars, at Michael and the men, at Sarah and Charlie with their laundry, at the children playing, the children…

"No," she said, "Not yet."

**The End  
**

* * *

**Author's Note: **A mixed ending, both happy and sad. I suppose my endings are never completely clear-cut, but I do hope it was satisfactory. ;)

And I thought I should let you guys know, this is not the _end_ end of this story. I have at least one more one-shot planned, a sort of "deleted scene" in which Gabriel finally gets to say good-bye to Jack. After that, who knows. NaNoWriMo is just around the corner and I have a few ideas swirling around in my head that I'd like to put on paper. So yes, there should be some more of Max, Gabriel and Jack in the near future. Maybe not a full-blown sequel, but something.

Once more, I have thank all my amazing readers/reviewers. This last chapter is especially dedicated to you. Thanks for everything! Good-bye for now, but hopefully not forever. ^_^


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